Electromechanical simulation of a Pointing System Model for Satellite Optical communication

Implementation of a two Degrees of Freedom Pointing System model to enable ship-satellite communication

with the aim of creating self driving cargo ships.

The Pointing System is similar to a telescope in terms of Degrees of Freedom (Azimuth and Elevation) and the model

kinematics definition was possible using MSC ADAMS software. The model was exported to a Simulink block in order to

generate the control block diagram and than an ADAMS-Simulink Co-simulation. The acquisition and orbital

propagation errors for the satellite and the acquisition errors of ship motions have been taken into consideration in the

control system generation. The main goal is to evaluate the pointing motion to verify the satellite’s locking with the

adopted optical communication technologies. In order to reduce pointing error, scanning strategies were considered and

the scanning amplitude and frequency values used for the choice of piezoelectric actuators for the optical component.