Advanced Holographic miniature sun sensor optical system

Sigma Research and Engineering holds a provisional patent for, and proposes a novel concept for high-resolution attitude determination sun sensor, which reduces mass and power of current commercial technology sensors by orders of magnitude, while at the same time providing high resolution and a very wide field of view. The sensor is based on a few basic principles and state of the art technology. The wide FOV, high resolution, and compact size are achieved by overlapping fields-of-view onto a single high-resolution detector using holographic technology. Overlapping the fields of small angular sectors in the field of view of a fine sensor permits sharing a single high-resolution focal plane array of a moderate size among sectors. For a given array size it allows to spread the signal in the elevation direction over N times the number of pixels that a sensor with a single sector and the same system field of view would have used. thus creating a system that overcomes the inherent problems of wide field of view systems, namely, low resolution.