Attitude Estimation Based on the Spherical Simplex Transformation Modified Unscented Kalman Filter

An antenna attitude estimation algorithm is proposed to improve the antenna pointing accuracy for the satellite communication on‐the‐move. The extrapolated angular acceleration is adopted to improve the performance of the time response. The states of the system are modified according to the modification rules. The spherical simplex transformation unscented Kalman filter is used to improve the precision of the estimated attitude and decrease the calculation of the unscented Kalman filter. The experiment results show that the proposed algorithm can improve the instantaneity of the estimated attitude and the precision of the antenna pointing, which meets the requirement of the antenna pointing.