Design and Development of a Simulator System for Star Trackers with the Aim of Aerial Vehicle Navigation

According to importance of aerial vehicle automatic navigation and involved problems in GPS and IMU navigation systems there are always needs for other navigation or aided navigation systems. Navigation of aerial vehicles using image information is a proper option for these systems. In this regard، using image information of stars for navigation has led to development of star tracker systems. Simulators of these systems have important role in evaluating navigation algorithms before real flight tests. As all parameters of sensor and star positions are known this simulation can be used for assessment of accuracy and precession of all involved algorithms in star tracker data processing scheme، such as center detection، star identification، and attitude determination algorithms. In this research a star tracker simulator system have been presented. The presented simulator can does different pre-processing schemes on star catalogue. Tuning of sensor parameters and its carrier platform in inertial space also has been provided by presented simulator system. Assessment of different simulations considering different sensor parameters and in different attitudes with different rotational rates shows the high capability of the proposed system