Abstract:

The attitude determination methods, which employ the multiplicative extended Kalman filter (MEKF) technique, is effective and widely used in real applications. The theory of stochastic stability of the discretetime extended Kalman filter is employed to discuss the contributions of factors that take great influence on the accuracy of attitude determination. The factors are mainly considered as follows: the sampling frequency of starsensor, angular rate, initial error and filtering parameters. Finally, the simulation experiments validate the effectiveness of former analysis. This work is not only helpful to understand the MEKF attitude determination method in theory, but also useful to the practical applications.