Design And Implementation Of The Sun Sensor

Sun sensor is one of the most important sensors in satellite’s attitude determination and control system, different kinds of sun sensor has been developed to meet with the unique application. However, with the rapid development of the past decade in pico-satellite, the sun sensors can not quite fit with the severe requirement of power consumption and small volum any more, and thus to development the new miniaturized sun sensor becomes very important.This article optimized and improved the digital and analog sun sersor we had based on the characteristics of the pico-satellite, which means small size, low power consumption, large field of view angle and high-precision.Typically the analog sun sensor has a low measurement accuracy and weak anti-interference ability. Based on the existing research, in order to achieve the balance point in the actual design, a completely and detailed analysis of the four-quadrant differential analog sun sensors has been made. Through the error compensation formula and optimize the circuit design, the sensor has a higher measurement accuracy, meanwhile reduces the size and power of the sensor.The original panoramic annular lens digital sun sensor having a field view of120°x360°, but its center tapered region is blind, which greatly reduces the value of its practical application. So we use a fisheye lens to replace the panoramic annular lens, make it has a truly panoramic field of view angle. In order to obtain a higher accuracy, this article analysis the optical imaging system and the centroid algorithm, trying to improve the solar image quality and the centroid algorithm accuracy, to reach a large field of view angle, high-precision characteristics.With careful design and test, the analog and digital sun sensor achieve the low power consumption and small size characteristics, in particular has a larger increase in the measurement accuracy and field of view, thus provides the important guarantee for the next generation of pico-satellite.