Optimal Maneuver Strategy to Improve the Observability of Angles-Only Rendezvous

This paper proposes an optimal maneuver strategy to improve the observability of angles-only rendezvous from the perspective of relative navigation. A set of dimensionless relative orbital elements (ROEs) is used to parameterize the relative motion, and the objective function of the observability of angles-only navigation is established. An analytical solution of the optimal maneuver strategy to improve the observability of angles-only navigation is obtained by means of numerical analysis. A set of dedicated semi-physical simulation system is built to test the performances of the proposed optimal maneuver strategy. Finally, the effectiveness of the method proposed in this paper is verified through the comparative analysis of the objective function of the observability of angles-only navigation and the performances of the angles-only navigation filter under different maneuver schemes. Compared with the cases without orbital maneuver, it is concluded that the tangential filtering accuracy with the optimal orbital maneuver at the terminal time is increased by 35% on average, and the radial and normal filtering accuracy is increased by 30% on average.