A swarm architecture for small satellites pointing towards common targets

Abstract

This paper proposes a leader-follower architecture for coordinating a swarm of satellites to observe stationary targets on the Earth's surface. Such a strategy uses the intersection of the line of sight of the distributed sensors as a key parameter to reconfigure and reorient the swarm satellites. Follower satellites receive the goal pointing and position of the leader satellite, to then autonomously calculate the required pointing direction to detect and observe the same targets. The performance of handling uncertainties due to communication delays on the pointing and position goals of the swarm is assessed and compensated via a Smith-like predictor. Simulation results demonstrate the viability of the proposed methodology for a typical small satellite swarm scenario.