Solar system sensors all flash

How does Flash LIDAR work?

Credits: NASA Flash lidar creates a digital elevation map using a laser, which would normally be pencil thin, but instead is diffused and spread out to a 10-to-15-degree angle to illuminate a section of terrain. The sensor is an array of pixels and each pixel is covering a small spot on the ground.

What is a solar sensor made of?

The sensor was composed of a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) mask with an N-shaped slit as well as a single linear array charge-coupled device (CCD), as illustrated in Fig. 27. It measured the Sun's position in two direction (East-West and North-South).

How does a sun sensor work in photovoltaic panels?

Yilmaz et al. proposed and tested a sun sensor for photovoltaic panels, which was composed of two photoresistors placed at 180° and separated by a thin wall, as shown in Fig. 15. This sensor detected the Sun's position based on the light intensity. When the Sun moved, the wall produced a shade in some photoresistors.

What is a sun position sensor for photovoltaic panels?

Recently, a sun position sensor for photovoltaic panels, containing a number of small cells that provided electricity to the sensor, was presented by Hongyi et al. . This sun position sensor consists of two photodiodes and a metal wall created for generating light and shade, as shown in Fig. 14.

What is a solar position sensor?

This sensor was basically composed of a collimator, a position sensitive detector (PSD) that measures the Sun's position in two-directions (North-South and East-West), a structure, a mechanical drive and a control system (microcontroller and electronic), as shown in Fig. 2.

What is a digital sun position sensor?

A digital sun position sensor produces encoded discrete signal. There are numerous research works in the literature that presents design of sun position sensor based on the digital signals. For example, Leijtens et al. designed a micro digital sun sensor for a satellite, as illustrated in Fig. 26.