Orbital satellite pursuit-evasion game-theoretical control

This paper develops and evaluates a trust-based sensor management game-theoretical control approach for orbital pursuit-evasion for satellite interception and collision avoidance. Using a coupled zero-sum differential pursuit-evasion (PE) game, the pursuer minimizes the satellite interception time and evader tries to maximize interception time for collision avoidance. A trust-based decentralized sensor manager performs sensor-to-target assignment and nonlinear tracking. The interception-avoidance (IA) game approach provides a worst-case solution, which is the robust lower-bound performance case. We divide our IA algorithm into two parts: first, the pursuer will rotate its orbit to the same plane of the evader, and second, the two spacecrafts will play a zero-sum PE game. A two-step setup saves energy during the PE game because rotating a pursuer orbit requires more energy than maneuvering within the orbit plane. For the PE orbital game, an optimum open loop feedback saddle-point equilibrium solution is calculated between the pursuer and evader control structures. Using the open-loop feedback rule, each player calculates their distributed control track state. Numerical simulations demonstrate the performance using the NASA General Mission Analysis Tool (GMAT) simulator.