Modelling, simulation, and gain scheduling control of large radiotelescopes

A detailed model of a radiotelescope (yoke on king post parabolic antenna) is developed. It uses modelling concepts that have been successfully applied to industrial robotic systems. In this approach, the interactions between the different dynamically coupled subsystems are viewed as disturbances whose dynamic behaviours are known. The proposed controller for the radiotelescope was developed by using a gain-scheduling strategy, which has the advantage of using known parameters for every region of operation. Thus, the computational complexity is substantially decreased and, in consequence, the parameters for each region of operation can be independently computed by inexpensive stand-alone microcomputers.