Pose Measurement and Motion Estimation of Space On-Orbit CubeSats Based on Micro-Doppler Effect Using Laser Coherent Radar

Abstract

The pose measurement and motion estimation of long-distance space CubeSats is a difficult problem for autonomous rendezvous and track maintenance. In this work, an approach is proposed for the pose estimation of CubeSat based on the micro-Doppler effect by a laser radar system. Parameters such as spin rate and attitude angle can be estimated using data extracted from the returned signal. By utilizing threshold processing, edge extraction of time-frequency (TF) images can be achieved effectively. When the target size is unknown, the double edge ratio method (DERM) is suggested to obtain the attitude angle. The simulation results show that when the noise is not too high, the spin rate and the attitude angle can be acquired precisely. Our experiment indicates that the error for the estimation of spin and pose by our approach fulfills the demand in practice.