Abstract

Spacecraft electrostatic discharge (ESD) can generate transient electric-field disturbances, pulse currents, and electromagnetic coupling that threaten onboard electronics and mission reliability. Localizing discharge sources in confined spacecraft spaces remains difficult because conventional time-difference-of-arrival, radio-frequency, acoustic, and optical methods often require strict synchronization, large arrays, suitable propagation media, line-of-sight conditions, or explicit propagation models. This study develops a spacecraft-oriented, ground-validated electrostatic-induction sensor-array framework for three-dimensional localization of transient discharge events. Different from conventional received-signal-strength-based Apollonius localization, the proposed approach uses relative transient electrostatic-induction response features, including root-mean-square value, envelope energy, and integrated energy, and calibrates their feature ratios into distance-ratio constraints using a Power + offset mapping. These calibrated constraints are interpreted as Apollonius-sphere constraints, and the source coordinate is estimated by nonlinear residual minimization without relying on high-precision arrival-time picking. The method is evaluated on a controlled one-cubic-meter confined-space laboratory platform with known sensor geometry. Ten independent test positions show centimeter-level localization accuracy in the present calibration domain. The envelope-energy representation performs best, with a mean three-dimensional error of 7.01 cm, a median error of 6.94 cm, and a maximum error of 10.05 cm. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the sensing–calibration–inversion chain as a preliminary ground-based proof of concept. The reported accuracy should not be interpreted as direct on-orbit performance because the present experiment does not include vacuum, plasma, thermal gradients, spacecraft materials, metallic enclosures, or electronics integrated for spacecraft onboard operation; further environment-specific calibration and validation are required before practical spacecraft deployment.

IPC Classification

Keywords