Performance Comparison of PD and Sliding adaptive controller method for rigid satellite attitude stabilization

This paper introduces and compares two control strategies for rigid satellite stabilization with external perturbation uncertainties. First, an adaptive PD controller (APDC) and sliding mode adaptive control (SMAC) are proposed to deal with external disturbance's influence on the satellite attitude stabilization system. Then, the disturbances uncertainties are estimated using an adaptive algorithm and compensated in the proposed controllers. The tracking error and the closed-loop system stability are ensured based on the Lyapunov analysis and the properties of the quaternion representation of spacecraft dynamics. The efficiencies and disadvantages are examined on a design example for both cases. The modelling and simulation are done by using MATLAB-Simulink programming. The results can illustrate the feasibility and the effectiveness of the two proposed control strategies.