Differential Geometric Approach to Sliding Mode Control of Spacecraft Attitude Tracking

Based on the idea that nonlinear PWM controller design can be directly applied to the attitude tracking problem of thruster-controlled spacecraft because it constitutes a sub-class of nonlinear PWM controlled system, nonlinear and output error feedback PWM controlled system is considered to describe the behavior of thruster-controlled spacecraft, and to determine actual thruster on-time which guarantees system stability. A differential geometric approach is utilized to show an asymptotical stability of average PWM system, which finally guarantees the stability of closed loop PWM controlled system. Simulation results show that the motions of PWM controlled system occurs very closely around those of the average model of PWM controlled system.