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Control systems

Ground Simulation Platform for Gravitational Wave Detection Satellites Meets In-Orbit Performance Requirements

Strategic Insights

— 1 min read

Research conducted at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a ground simulation platform using the H-infinity control method in Simulink to meet the in-orbit performance verification requirements of a drag-free control system for gravitational wave detection satellites. The platform uses FPGA implementation to accelerate the core algorithm of drag-free control, achieving position control accuracy of +/- 5 μm and attitude accuracy of +/- 10 μrad.

Key Takeaways:

  • The ground simulation platform uses a frequency-domain linear robust control design and a frequency pre-warped bilinear transformation method to discretize the multi-degree-of-freedom controller.
  • The established control system model includes 18 degrees of freedom, with 12 from the dual test masses and 6 from the satellite body.
  • The platform utilizes a rapid reconfigurable hardware architecture and the Vitis Model Composer tool to efficiently translate the Simulink algorithm model into hardware description language.
  • The FPGA platform maintains numerical equivalence with the Simulink platform, with a maximum error of 10^-13.
  • The hardware acceleration improves dynamic response speed by an order of magnitude and reduces processing latency to the microsecond level.
  • The research provides a reliable engineering validation approach for ultra-precision control systems in gravitational wave detection.

Statistics:

  • 18 degrees of freedom in the established control system model.
  • 12 degrees of freedom from the dual test masses.
  • 6 degrees of freedom from the satellite body.
  • 15-channel gradient test comparison showed numerical equivalence between the FPGA and Simulink platforms.
  • Maximum error of 10^-13 between the FPGA and Simulink platforms.
  • Hardware acceleration improved dynamic response speed by an order of magnitude.
  • Position control accuracy of +/- 5 μm achieved.
  • Attitude accuracy of +/- 10 μrad achieved.
  • Processing latency improved to the microsecond level.

Sources:

  • Symmetry 2025;17(9):1495.
  • Mdpi, St Alban-Anlage 66, Ch-4052 Basel, Switzerland.
  • Mingzhong Pan, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Ucas, Hangzhou Inst Adv Study, Hangzhou 310024, People's Republic of China.
  • Ao Li, Wenze Wan, Yipeng Cao, Lufan Xie, Di Liu, Jin Yang, and Pengcheng Wang.

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