Slew path planning of agile-satellite antenna pointing mechanism with optimal real-time data transmission performance

This paper investigates the mission planning problem of an agile satellite equipped with a two-dimensional antenna pointing mechanism. Multiple relay satellites and ground stations are included into the scenario to ensure the real-time data downlink. Therefore, to achieve the optimal real-time data transmission performance, two optimization modes are proposed in this paper to generate the slew path for both the satellite base and the antenna pointing mechanism. First, a baseline attitude coordinate system is introduced to efficiently handle the constraint of the problem. Second, the decoupled method is presented based on the two-level optimization strategy, which combines the genetic algorithm and the artificial potential method. Third, the dynamic programming concept is introduced to generate the optimal slew path by multi-body control approach. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms can properly circumvent the complex mission planning problem, and that the maximum real-time data downlink can be established while ensuring the complete coverage of the target area. (C) 2019 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.