Design of an Adaptive Sliding Mode for Satellite Attitude Control based on Barrier Function

Aldoori, Osamah A.; Hassan, Mohammed Y.; Issa, Abbas H.

doi:https://doi.org/10.33103/2617-3352.1523

	Design of an Adaptive Sliding Mode for Satellite Attitude Control based on Barrier Function
IRAQI JOURNAL OF COMPUTERS, COMMUNICATIONS, CONTROL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
Volume 26, Issue 1, April 2026
Document Type: Research Paper
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33103/2617-3352.1523
Authors
Osamah A. Aldoori^* ¹; Mohammed Y. Hassan²; Abbas H. Issa³
¹University of Technology, College of Control and Systems Engineering, Baghdad, Iraq
²College of Artificial Intelligence Engineering, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq
³College of Electrical Engineering, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq
Abstract
Sliding mode control (SMC) has demonstrated significant success in controlling nonlinear systems, particularly those subject to disturbances and uncertainties. However, due to the negative eﬀect of the Chattering phenomenon, it has become necessary to employ an Adaptive Sliding Mode Controller (ASMC) capable of handling time-varying disturbances. This work presents a two-phase Barrier Function (BF) based Adaptive Sliding Mode Controller (BFASMC). This controller is designed to achieve robust stability and performance of nonlinear systems without prior knowledge of disturbance bounds, and applied to satellite Attitude control. The first phase is a constant gain adaptation to ensure rapid convergence, while, the second phase is a BF adaptation mechanism to maintain the system states in predefined neighborhood of zero. Stability and finite-time convergence are rigorously established using Lyapunov criteria. A comparison with Conventional Sliding Mode Control (CSMC) and the Plesten et. al. adaptation strategy (we will refer to it later as PASMC), which is considered close to the method in this research has been made to demonstrate the strength of the proposed method against them. Simulation results demonstrate enhanced adaptability, robustness, and smoother control behavior. The eﬀectiveness of the proposed approach is validated by simulation results for satellite attitude control under external severe time varying disturbances. The simulation results were very promising, as the results, show the proposed controller tracks the states to desired trajectories accurately with steady sate error up to (0.0029 rad/s) and minimize control eﬀort down to (0.4251 Nm) with excellent adaptation, disturbance reduction and chattering elimination.
Keywords
Sliding Mode Control (SMC); Barrier Function(BF); Adaptive SMC; Rigid Spacecraft model

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