IMPROVEMENT OF SUN ANGLE ACCURACY FROM IN-ORBIT DATA OF A QUADRANT PHOTODIODE SUN SENSOR

Dmytro Faizullin; Koju Hiraki; HORYU; Mengu Cho

doi:10.29121/granthaalayah.v5.i5.2017.1837

Authors

Dmytro Faizullin Mechanical and Control Engineering, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan
Koju Hiraki Mechanical and Control Engineering, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan
HORYU-IV team Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan
Mengu Cho Applied Science for Integrated System Engineering, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v5.i5.2017.1837

Keywords:

Angle Measurement, Photodiodes Gap, Polynomial Fitting, Quadrant Photodiode, Saturation, Small Satellite

Abstract [English]

The sun vector is commonly used for defining a satellite attitude and many types of sensors exist for its determination. A fine pinhole sun sensor type was chosen and designed for HORYU-IV nanosatellite of Kyushu Institute of Technology. This sensor has a round-shaped hole and uses commercial off-the-shelf silicon photodiode, which consists of four small sensitive elements arranged close to each other. This type of sensors commonly uses look-up tables for providing high accuracy, which requires a large amount of data to be saved. Polynomial methods for sun vector determination were considered instead of look-up tables to avoid having a large amount of data to be saved. The influence of dead spaces between photodiodes on sensor accuracy was also investigated. The sensor was tested in space environment. It was found that its output signals went to saturation point. A method for the compensation of signals truncated by saturation was proposed. It was found that: 1) polynomial method provided 0.1deg accuracy for a sensor with ±5deg field of view; 2) accounting for gaps between photodiodes decreases the average error of the angle determined by 15%; 3) a method for compensation of truncated signals saves full sensor FOV with decreasing accuracy till 0.11deg.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Wertz, J. ed. Spacecraft Attitude Determination and Control. Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic Publisher, 1978. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9907-7

J. Garcia Ortega, C.L. Tarrida, J.M. Quero, MEMS solar sensor testing for satellite applications, 2009 Spanish Conference on Electron Devices, Santiago de Compostela, 2009, pp. 345-348. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/SCED.2009.4800503

S4349 photodiode Hamamatsu. [Online]. Available:

https://www.hamamatsu.com/eu/en/product/alpha/S/4106/S4349/index.html

G. Falbel and M. A. Paluszek, An ultra low weight/low cost three axis attitude readout system for nano-satellites, 2001 IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings (Cat. No.01TH8542), Big Sky, MT, 2001, pp. 2469-2481 vol.5.

D. P. Ramer and J. C. Rains Jr., Quadrant light detector, U.S. patent 5 705 804, Jan. 6, 1998.

E. Boslooper, BepiColombo Fine Sun Sensor, in Proc. ICSO 2012, Ajaccio. [Online]. Available: http://esaconferencebureau.com/custom/icso/2012/papers/fp_icso-029.pdf.

P. Ortega, G. López-Rodríguez, J. Ricart, A Miniaturized Two Axis Sun Sensor for Attitude Control of Nano-Satellites, IEEE Sensor Journal, VOL. 10, NO. 10, October 2010. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2010.2047104

I. Shafer, C. Powell, J. Stanton, CubeSat Solar Sensor Final Report, Olin-NASA Research Group, 2008. [Online]. Available: http://nasa.olin.edu/projects/2008/sos/files/SOSReport.pdf.

D. Faizullin, K. Hiraki, M. Cho, Optimization of a sun vector determination for pinhole type sun sensor. [Unpublished].

Bi-Cell & Quadrant Photodiodes. [Online]. Available:

https://www.aptechnologies.co.uk/index.php/support/photodiodes/bi-cell-a-quadrant-photodiodes.

I. Goushcha, B. Tabbert and A. O. Goushcha, Optical and electrical crosstalk in pin photodiode array for medical imaging applications, 2007 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, Honolulu, HI, 2007, pp. 4348-4353. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/NSSMIC.2007.4437077