Precision attitude and position determination for the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS)

Abstract

The Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) is required to achieve stringent attitude determination accuracy (3.0×10 -4 deg on-board and 1.4×10 -4 deg ground-based), position determination accuracy (1m ground-based), and attitude stability (3.9 × 10 -4 deg/5sec) in order to provide precise geometric accuracy for high-resolution images without ground control points. It is designed to yield the geolocation determination accuracy of 6m from attitude and position estimates and that of 3m with an additional high-bandwidth measurement. Presented in this paper are ALOS's platform and ground systems technologies developed for achieving the attitude determination accuracy and the position determination accuracy. They include a precision star tracker, optimal attitude estimation algorithms (real-time and off-line), an alignment change reduction, a jitter sensor, a precision GPS receiver, and a ground-based position estimation algorithm. The star tracker provides the best star position accuracy (random error: 9.0arcsec, and bias error: 0.74arcsec). The on-board attitude determination algorithm estimates attitude quaternion by applying an extended Kalman filter. The off-line attitude estimation introduced an extended-Kalman-filter-based smoother. To minimize the alignment change, the sensors are placed on the optical bench subject to precise temperature control. The jitter sensor provides precise angular information (0.010arcsec) from 2Hz to 500Hz and extends the attitude determination bandwidth. The dual-frequency GPS receiver capable of measuring pseudoranges and carrier phases allows the ground-based position determination with sub-meter accuracy.