A novel two-stage extended Kalman filter algorithm for reaction flywheels fault estimation

This paper investigates the problem of two-stage extended Kalman filter (TSEKF)-based fault estimation for reaction flywheels in satellite attitude control systems (ACSs). Firstly, based on the separate-bias principle, a satellite ACSs with actuator fault is transformed into an augmented nonlinear discrete stochastic model; then, a novel TSEKF is suggested such that it can simultaneously estimate satellite attitude information and actuator faults no matter they are additive or multiplicative; finally, the proposed approach is respectively applied to estimating bias faults and loss of effectiveness for reaction flywheels in satellite ACSs, and simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed fault estimation approach. (C) 2016 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Published by Elsevier Ltd.