An autonomous navigation scheme based on starlight, geomagnetic and gyros with information fusion for small satellites

•A starlight/magnetometers/gyros navigation scheme was proposed for satellites.•The detailed autonomous navigation system model was deduced and established.•Self-adaption EKF was used to estimate navigation parameters.•Simulations indicate the scheme can achieve high precise navigation information.

To improve the precision of autonomous navigation for small satellites, an innovative integrated navigation scheme based on starlight, geomagnetic and gyros is proposed. The accurate starlight vectors measured by star sensors can make up the inaccuracy of gyros and magnetometers, and the real-time information exported by gyros can compensate the shortcoming of low date rate in star sensors. The integrated system model is deduced and established with orbital dynamics, attitude kinematics and measurement models, and the information fusion algorithm based on self-adaptive Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is applied to get high accurate navigation parameters. Simulation results demonstrate that this autonomous navigation scheme can achieve high accurate position, velocity and attitude, which can improve the precision for small satellites.