Target search methods for space situational awareness

Space situational awareness;tracking;target search

Patel, Mihir Jagdishbhai ; Ho ; Koki

关键词: Space situational awareness;    tracking;    target search;   

Others  :  https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/101218/PATEL-THESIS-2018.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

美国|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

This work studies methods to detect target in an orbit around the Earth using a space based sensor. Searching for a target among a large set of candidate orbits is a difficult and time consuming problem. Considering orbital dynamics, sensor uncertainties and the initial size of candidate location distribution, it is desirable to develop efficient search techniques. In this work, information-theoretic methods for searching a target in a large probability distribution using a space based sensor is considered. One intuitive approach is to steer the sensor towards regions of high probability density.Alternatively, information-theoretic methods steer the sensor based on metrics of the information gain in the posterior probability distribution.Through simulation, it is shown that information-theoretic search methods produce greater knowledge about probability distribution of the target's orbit. We also present methods to lower the computing expense imposed on the computer on-board a space based sensor. The issue is addressed using data clustering technique called K-means clustering. It is shown that errors resulting from searching the target after clustering is much lower compared to errors resulting from searching targets at the locations of higher probability.