This paper studies the implementation of a novel wireless local positioning system (WLPS) for spacecraft formation flying to maintain high-performance spacecraft relative and absolute position estimation. A WLPS equipped with antenna arrays allows each spacecraft to measure the relative range and coordinate angle(s) of other spacecraft located in its coverage area. The dynamic base station and the transponder of WLPS enable spacecraft to localize each other in the formation. Because the signal travels roundtrip in WLPS, and due to the high spacecraft velocities, the signal transmission time delay reduces the localization performance. This work studies spacecraft formation positions estimation performance assuming that only WLPS is available onboard. The feasibility of estimating the spacecraft absolute position using only one-dimensional antenna array is also investigated. The effect of including GPS measurements in addition to WLPS is studied and compared to a GPS standalone system. 1. Introduction The relative and absolute positions estimation of spacecraft formations is a fundamental task in many space missions. Relative position estimation plays an important role in spacecraft formation flying (SFF) missions, a subject that has received a great deal of attention by researchers in recent decades. Some SFF missions require that multiple spacecraft in different orbits communicate without interruption; for example, satellites in the CITRIS-COSMIC system are required to communicate with each other to monitor the ionospheric irregularities [1]. Relative positions between satellites, such as Cluster and Cluster-II satellites that are launched by the European Space Agency, are estimated and controlled to support many collaborative tasks where satellites are required to maintain a specific formation in a continuous manner within the mission period [2]. Several relative positions estimation systems have been developed. The autonomous formation flyer (AFF) technology was developed for SFF [3, 4], where each spacecraft is equipped with a communication system to localize other spacecraft in the formation. This system provides high-precision estimates for relative positions. A relative position and attitude estimation through a vision-based navigation system (VISNAV) has been studied extensively in the literature [5–8]. The VISNAV enables one spacecraft measure the line-of-sight (LOS) measurements of the other spacecraft. Estimation performance of this technique is a function of the relative distance of spacecraft and the number of beacons installed on the
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