Design and implementation of an attitude determination system for the Cubesat UWE-2 (Hardware based)

The described Master thesis project describes the design and development of an \acl{ADS} for the Cubesat UWE-2. This report will give insight about the design, the development and the implementation of this important satellite component. Following previous experiences that have been made during the UWE project the need for a system capable of measuring the satellites attitude was expressed and this project has been defined. A decision has been made, which sensors are suitable to be integrated in the system. Afterwards a design of a system has been created that should fulfill the requirements of attitude determination while coping with the restrictions of the existing satellite structure. Also the power requirement of the system should be not too high. After the presentation of the general system design, the hardware structure development as well as the software development is described in detail. The design should be appropriate for pico satellites in general while the system was implemented with respect to the already existing hardware and software structures of the UWE satellite. A prototype was manufactured along with development of the needed software parts. This hardware is able to fulfill the mentioned tasks with a reasonable power consumption. The thesis includes hardware tests and accuracy determination of the implemented system giving results about the performance of the integrated sensors. This report is completed by concluding ideas along with ideas for possible improvements and extensions.Validerat; 20101217 (root