Simulation of database search algorithms towards star-identification speed enhancement

The main challenge of the star sensor as a real-time sensor is the execution time of attitude determination. Attitude determination using the star sensor includes five main steps: star catalog and identification algorithm selection, database construction, image processing, star identification and finally, attitude determination. Star identification consists of the implementation of the selected identification algorithm on the field of view stars and database searching. in the process of attitude determination using the star sensor, database searching is the most time-consuming part. This paper deals with three methods for database searching and surveys the search time for each of the presented algorithms also the consideration of using them as the database search methods for the star sensor. The methods are the ternary search technique, Fibonacci search technique, and interpolation search technique. The presented algorithms have not been used so far in the star sensor database searching. To survey the influence of the database dimensions on the identification time, each of the presented methods was studied using seven databases with different dimensions. The results show the superiority of the interpolation search method.