Comparing Control Strategies fora Satcom on the Move Antenna

Sammanfattning: Satellite communication is a widely known method for communicating with remote or disaster-strickenplaces. Sometimes, thecommunication can be a matter of life and death,and it is thus vital that it works well. For two-way communication (such as internet) it is necessary for the antenna on Earth to point towards the satellite with a pointing error not larger than a few tenths of a degree. For example, regulations decided by the authorities in the U.S. forbid pointing errors larger than 0.5°. In some cases the antenna on Earth has to be moving while satellite communication is maintained. Such cases can be when the antenna is mounted to a vehicle, and the antenna thus has to compensate for the vehicle’s movement in order to point at the satellite. This application of satellite communication is called Satcom on the Move (SOTM). By constructing a Simulink model of an entire SOTM-system, including vehicle dynamics, satellite position, signal behavior, sensors, and actuators, different control strategies can be compared. This thesis compares the performance of an H2- and an LQG-controller for a static initial acquisition case, and a dynamic inertial stabilization case. The static initial acquisition case is performed with a search algorithm (SpiralSearch) aiming to find the satellite signalin the shortest possible time for a given initial pointing error. The dynamic inertial stabilization case is performed by allowing the simulated vehicle to drive in a slalom pattern and over uneven grounds. The controllers are designed based on modern control theory.The conclusion of this thesis is that the H2-controller performs slightly better in the static testcase,whereastheLQG-controller performs slightly better in the dynamic test cases. However, the results are greatly influenced by the tuning of the controllers, meaning that the comparison is not necessarily true for the controllers rather than the tuning parameters.