Review on gyroless attitude determination methods for small satellites

Abstract

Abstract This study surveys the developments in the gyroless attitude determination system, especially for small satellites. Two kinds of gyroless satellite attitude determination algorithms were reviewed namely, vector measurements and Kalman filter based methods. Traditional and nontraditional Kalman filters were considered in the Kalman filter based methods including Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) and Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Also, robust versions of those Kalman filters, which were incorporated with single, and multiple measurement noise scale factors (SMNSF, MMNSF respectively) are investigated and compared in the presence of measurement faults.