Distributed Space Situational Awareness (D-SSA) With A Satellite-Assisted Collaborative Space Surveillance Network

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of tracking space-borne objects of interest (OoIs) with a satellite-assisted collaborative space surveillance network (SSN). It is formulated as a multiple moving-object tracking problem in a hybrid distributed wireless sensor network (WSN) made of both mobile and static nodes. The static nodes may be considered as ground-based sensors with fixed locations, while mobile sensor nodes can be satellites in space. At any given time, due to relative motion among nodes and OoI's, not all sensors are capable of observing a given target. The number of space OoI's (targets) of interest is several orders of magnitude larger than the number of nodes in the SSN, and each node can observe only a finite number of targets at a time. The challenge is to be able to schedule the nodes so that the best possible node-target assignments are made. A distributed approach is more desired in terms of scalability and robustness. However, for a distributed scheduling scheme to be efficient the distributed scheduling decisions need to be consistent across the network, which in turn requires the distributed local tracking estimates to be consistent across the network. As a result, the problem turns out to be a nonlinear consensus tracking problem on a time-varying graph with incomplete data and noisy communications links. We propose a distributed and collaborative framework in which each node in the network updates its tracking estimate of an object based on its own observations via an extended Kalman filter (EKF), followed by a consensus update stage in which nodes exchange their local estimates in order to arrive at a consensus on the distributed estimates leading to conflict-free node scheduling. Simulations of a two-dimensional hybrid SSN have been carried out in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed distributed tracking with consensus algorithm.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2011
Accession Number
ADA541719

Entities

People

  • Jed Carty
  • R. Scott Erwin
  • Sudharman K. Jayaweera

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Artificial Satellites
  • Consensus Algorithms
  • Detectors
  • Equations
  • Ground Based
  • Information Exchange
  • Kalman Filters
  • Sensor Networks
  • Simulations
  • Situational Awareness
  • Space Objects
  • Space Situational Awareness
  • Space Surveillance
  • Spacecraft
  • Two Dimensional
  • Wireless Sensor Networks

Fields of Study

  • Engineering

Readers

  • Adaptive Control and Estimation with Uncertainty in Dynamic Systems.
  • Aerospace Engineering.
  • Computer Networking

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Space Objects