Design and prototyping of a satellite antenna slew testbed

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the development of the next generation slewing antennas for spacecraft, ground or sea systems. Current antenna slewing systems may also benefit from the results. More specifically this thesis provides a new testbed for implementing slew maneuvers in a laboratory environment. The antenna slew testbed was built with in-house manufactured parts, 3-D printed parts and commercial-off-the-shelf equipment. The approach for designing this testbed involved CAD analysis and rapid prototyping, the application of dynamic scaling and similitude concepts, and implementation of hardware and software to support experimentation of novel maneuver concepts. To illustrate this, a maneuver based on optimal control theory is implemented. The applicability of this testbed casts a wide net because of its scale size as compared to existing or future systems. Moreover, the testbed is designed in a modular form to allow a variety of different antenna systems to be represented for testing slews. These include ground, space, and shipboard antenna systems.