Development of distributed general integrated navigation simulation platform for spacecraft

Navigation system, which supplies high precision navigation information, is a crucial part of a spacecraft. Space flight tests, to demonstrate the performance of a spacecraft navigation system, are usually very expensive and high risk. In order to reduce cost and shorten period of development during designing a spacecraft navigation system, building a navigation simulation platform becomes an efficient method. A distributed general integrated navigation simulation platform was developed using multiple computers and data bus under the design principle of modularization universalization and standardization. Based on the characteristic analysis of a spacecraft navigation system, an integrated navigation scheme combining strap-down inertial navigation system (SINS), global positioning system (GPS), x-ray pulsar navigation system (XPNS), magnetometer and star sensor was proposed. The scheme used the federated Kalman filter algorithm as its information fusion algorithm. The configuration of the distributed simulation platform was designed to realize integrated navigation function including Trajectory Creator Subsystem, Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) Subsystem, SINS Subsystem, GPS Subsystem, XPNS Subsystem, Magnetometer Subsystem, Star Sensor Subsystem and Integrated Navigation Subsystem. The distributed simulation platform is composed of hardware system and software system. Hardware design, software development and algorithm in Part III were given. In Part IV, the extension of the distributed simulation platform was studied, to a new distributed simulation platform or a hardware-in-loop simulation platform. It is illustrated that the distributed simulation platform is capable of simulation spacecraft navigation system with high fidelity; also it can provide some useful advice for spacecraft navigation system designers.