Attitude control of satellites with delay in attitude measurement

Time delay in attitude sensors is one of the performance limiting factors in controlling the satellite attitude. In this paper, we investigate attitude control of a fully actuated satellite in presence of constant and known delay in attitude measurement. The proposed controller consists of a matrix gain which is computed by solving a time varying matrix differential equation depending on the time delay. We assume that the moment-of-inertia matrix of the satellite is unknown. The controller guarantees asymptotic convergence of the satellite attitude and angular velocity to their desired values in presence of delay. Finally, a simulation example is presented that illustrates performance of the proposed controller in presence of delayed attitude measurement.