Advanced Celestial Azimuth Sensing Technology

Current celestial azimuth sensors suffer from two challenges meant to be addressed through the proposed work. The first is an inability to operate in degraded weather conditions. This may be due to high levels of atmospheric contamination, e.g., smog and haze, as well as generally poor weather, such as significant cloud cover. This challenge will be addressed through the use of a multi-spectral solution tuned to provide the best possible operation in inclement atmospheric conditions, both day and night. Tuning will take place through the use of multiple spectral bands that will be realized through a combination of detectors and filters. The use of polarizing filters will also be explored. The second major shortcoming of current azimuth sensors is their slow speed of acquisition and accuracy. Toyon will address this problem through the use of advanced image processing algorithms implemented in field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), augmented with soft processor(s) for control and floating point operations. Toyon will leverage many years of experience in developing miniature camera systems in order to produce a celestial azimuth sensor that minimizes size, weight, and power (SWaP).