Autonomous Detection of Angle Random Walk and Quantization Noise of Fiber Optic Gyro in Attitude Determination System of Satellite

An algorithm for autonomously detecting angle random walk and quantization noise of fiber optic gyro in attitude determination system of satellite is proposed. To remove the information of satellite movement from gyro output, a star sensor can be used as an attitude standard, and the difference between angle increments of star sensor and gyro can be taken. The residual of the difference is analyzed using a simplified Allan variance method. As a byproduct of the difference, the noise of star sensor disturbs the variance analysis. This disturbance is reduced by a self-cancellation algorithm of star sensor noise. The simulation results show that the algorithm can detect 4.19exp-4°/√h angle random walk and 4.39exp-6° quantization noise in real time, and reflect degenerations in angle random walk and quantization noise of gyro caused by gamma radiation in space. The algorithm meets the requirements of autonomous detection in space, and is beneficial to performance maintainability and reconfiguration of the attitude determination system in satellite without any ground support.