A Robust Star Identification Algorithm with Multi-resolution Radial Pattern and Its Hardware Implementation

Abstract

Star sensor is a device that uses astronomical information for navigation and attitude measurement. It is widely used in satellites, intercontinental missiles, strategic bombers and other scenarios. Since star sensors are mainly used in the military field, we need a fast, robust and high accuracy star identification algorithm. In order to improve the performance of the star sensor, this paper will use the Haar wavelet transform to obtain the multi-resolution radial features of the star image, which is matched according to the resolution from low to high. The algorithm is implemented in a pipelined manner on the FPGA platform. Experiments show that the star identification rate of the scheme reaches 98% or more when the star position error is within 3 pixels, and the worst case time consuming is only 1.4 millisecond when the FPGA runs at 100 MHZ. Compared with the traditional algorithm, this is a more robust and real-time star identification algorithm.