A ground testing system for magnetic-only ADCS of nano-satellites

Abstract

This paper summarizes the development of a semi-physical ground testing system designed for the magnetic-only attitude determination and control system (ADCS) of nano-satellites. Based on dynamic and sensor models, the ground testing system is built on a PC connected to the on-board computer via WIFI. The software of ground testing system is based on MATLAB with the scalability to different algorithms, sensor and actuator models. Finally, the ground testing system is applied to evaluate a pre-flight model of a magnetic-only ADCS and results show that the software of the magnetic-only ADCS can fulfil the flight requirements on attitude determination and stabilization.