Receiver-Side Physics-Informed Residual Digital Twin for Predictive Fine Tracking in Inter-Satellite Optical Links

Abstract

Fine tracking in inter-satellite optical links must compensate residual line-of-sight (LOS) motion despite sensor noise, vibration, model mismatch, and actuator latency. This paper develops a receiver-side physics-informed residual digital twin (PIR-Twin) that combines a nominal LOS transition, Gaussian optics, a nonlinear quadrant-photodetector observation, and extended Kalman filter synchronization. A normalized autoregressive ridge model learns the transition mismatch from independent calibration estimates, while the known delayed fine-steering-mirror correction remains separate from the physical LOS dynamics. The synchronized twin predicts the LOS at the command-actuation instant and enables proactive fine tracking. A controlled evaluation compares open-loop, reactive, nominal-predictive, and PIR-Twin operation using disjoint tuning, calibration, and test realizations. Under the nominal scenario, PIR-Twin reduces RMS pointing error by 14.1% relative to reactive tracking and also improves actuation-time prediction accuracy. Extended robustness tests show that the proposed method retains the lowest mean pointing error over a broad actuator-delay range and under increased time-varying LOS-motion amplitudes without residual-model retraining. The results demonstrate that correcting systematic short-horizon model mismatch, rather than relying on nominal extrapolation alone, is the key mechanism enabling effective predictive fine tracking.