Concept Design,Modeling and Station-keeping Attitude Control of an Earth Observation Platform

The stratosphere airship provides a unique and promising platform for earth observation. Researches on the project design and control scheme for earth observation platforms are still rarely documented. Nonlinear dynamics, model uncertainties, and external disturbances contribute to the difficulty in maneuvering the stratosphere airship. A key technical challenge for the earth observation platform is station keeping, or the ability to remain fixed over a geo-location. This paper investigates the conceptual design, modeling and station-keeping attitude control of the near-space earth observation platform. A conceptual design of the earth observation platform is presented. The dynamics model of the platform is derived from the Newton-Euler formulation, and the station-keeping control system of the platform is formulated. The station-keeping attitude control approach for the platform is proposed. The multi-input multi-output nonlinear control system is decoupled into three single-input single-output linear subsystems via feedback linearization, the attitude controller design is carried out on the new linear systems using terminal sliding mode control, and the global stability of the closed-loop system is proven by using the Lyapunov theorem. The performance of the designed control system is simulated by using the variable step Runge-Kutta integrator. Simulation results show that the control system tracks the commanded attitude with an error of zero, which verify the effectiveness and robustness of the designed control system in the presence of parametric uncertainties. The near-space earth observation platform has several advantages over satellites, such as high resolution, fast to deploy, and convenient to retrieve, and the proposed control scheme provides an effective approach for station-keeping attitude control of the earth observation platform.

Numerical Simulation of Motion Response of an Offshore Observation Platform in Waves

Offshore observation platforms are required to have great ability to resist waves when they are operating at sea. Investigation on the motion characteristics of the platforms in the sea can provide significant reference values during the platform design procedure. In this paper, a series of numerical simulation on the interaction of a triple-hulled offshore observation platform with different incident waves is carried out. All of the simulations are implemented utilizing our own solver naoe-FOAM-SJTU, which is based and developed on the open source tools of OpenFOAM. Duration curves of motion characteristics and loads acting on the platform are obtained, and a comparison between the results of the amplitude in different incident waves is presented. The results show that the solver is competent in the simulation of motion response of platforms in waves.

Site testing campaign for the Large Optical/infrared Telescope of China:general introduction of the Daocheng site

The Daocheng site is one of the three candidate sites for the Large Optical/infrared Telescope(LOT)of China.It was discovered by Yunnan Observatories during the survey of potential sites for the next-generation large-aperture solar telescopes of China.This paper describes the overview of the site,the observation platform and the monitor instrument.In addition,simple statistical results are presented(from November,2016 up to December,2017).Detailed data results can refer to the overview of LOT site testing and data analysis articles,which were published during the same period.

Experiment on Leader Propagation Characteristics of Air Gaps in UHVDC Transmission Towers Under Positive Switching Impulse Voltages

Rapid developments in EHV/UHV transmission systems require a deeper understanding of the mechanism of long air gap discharge.Leader propagation is one of the main processes in long gap breakdown.In this paper,the leader propagation characteristics of real size±800 kV UHVDC transmission tower gaps under positive switching impulse voltages(185/2290μs)are investigated.An integrated observation platform consisting of an impulse voltage divider,a coaxial shunt,a high-speed video camera,and a set of integrated optical electric field sensors(IOES),is established.The waveforms of impulse voltage,discharge current,electric field variation at specific positions,and time-resolved photographs of discharge morphology are recorded.Axial leader velocity and the relationship between leader advancements and injected charge are obtained.The typical value of leader stable propagation velocity is 1.7–2.2 cm/μs,which varies slightly with the gap length and applied voltage amplitude.The leader velocity in the re-illumination process is much higher,and is seen as varying from 5 cm/μs to 30 cm/μs,with an average value around 10 cm/μs.The charge in leader channel per unit length is 20–40μC/m,which illustrates a near-direct proportion relationship between discharge current and leader velocity.The observed parameters are important for further simulation of the tower gap breakdown processes.

Big earth data analytics on Sentinel-1 and Landsat imagery in support to global human settlements mapping

Continuous global-scale mapping of human settlements in the service of international agreements calls for massive volume of multi-source,multi-temporal,and multi-scale earth observation data.In this paper,the latest developments in terms of processing big earth observation data for the purpose of improving the Global Human Settlement Layer(GHSL)data are presented.Two experiments with Sentinel-1 and Landsat data collections were run leveraging on the Joint Research Centre Earth Observation Data and Processing Platform.A comparative analysis of the results of built-up areas extraction from different remote sensing data and processing workflows shows how the information production supported by data-intensive computing infrastructure for optimization and multiple testing can improve the output information reliability and consistency within the GHSL scope.The paper presents the processing workflows and the results of the two main experiments,giving insights into the enhanced mapping capabilities gained by analyzing Sentinel-1 and Landsat data-sets,and the lessons learnt in terms of handling and processing big earth observation data.