A fast distributed cooperative fault‐tolerant control for earth observation satellite formation

Abstract To address the communication failure of satellite formation in earth observation scenarios, this paper proposes a distributed cooperative fault‐tolerance control framework based on communication topology reconstruction. According to the requirements of earth observation missions and common types of communication faults, we first propose an adaptive fast topology reconstruction algorithm for satellite formation communication. Based on optimally rigid graphs, arc addition operation, and path reversal operation, the proposed algorithm can quickly generate a feasible reconstruction communication topology after communication faults occur. On this basis, considering the actuator input saturation and the attitude and orbit coupling characteristics, a distributed cooperative fault‐tolerant controller that can converge in the prescribed time is designed by using the prescribed‐time theory, ensuring that the satellite formation can still maneuver quickly after the random communication fault occurs, and realizes the cooperative coverage of the earth observation area. Numerical experiments show that the proposed framework has considerable advantages in solving complex communication faults, especially in disturbance immunity and robustness.