Design of the reduced LQG compensator for the DSS-13 antenna

A linear-quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) compensator design procedure is proposed for the DSS-13 antenna. The procedure is based on two properties. It is shown that tracking and flexible motion of the antenna are almost independent (the separation property). As a consequence, compensators for the flexible and tracking parts can be designed separately. It is shown also that the balanced LQG compensator's effort is evenly divided between the controller and the estimator. This allows a minimization of the compensator order, which is important for implementation purposes. An efficient compensator reduction procedure that gives a stable low-order compensator of satisfactory performance is introduced. This approach is illustrated with a detailed compensator design for the DSS-13 antenna. The implementation of this compensator design requires an update of the antenna model.