Space Technology Research Laboratory (Space Lab), Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), Florianópolis 88040-900, Brazil.
Graduate Program in Applied Computer Science, University of Vale do Itajaí (UNIVALI), Itajaí 88302-901, Brazil.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Jan 29;21(3):907. doi: 10.3390/s21030907.
Developing star trackers quickly is non-trivial. Achieving reproducible results and comparing different algorithms are also open problems. In this sense, this work proposes the use of synthetic star images (a simulated sky), allied with the standardized structure of the Universal Verification Methodology as the base of a design approach. The aim is to organize the project, speed up the development time by providing a standard verification methodology. Future rework is reduced through two methods: a verification platform that us shared under a free software licence; and the layout of Universal Verification Methodology enforces reusability of code through an object-oriented approach. We propose a black-box structure for the verification platform with standard interfaces, and provide examples showing how this approach can be applied to the development of a star tracker for small satellites, targeting a system-on-a-chip design. The same test benches were applied to both early conceptual software-only implementations, and later optimized software-hardware hybrid systems, in a hardware-in-the-loop configuration. This test bench reuse strategy was interesting also to show the regression test capability of the developed platform. Furthermore, the simulator was used to inject specific noise, in order to evaluate the system under some real-world conditions.
快速开发星跟踪器并非易事。实现可重复的结果和比较不同的算法也是未解决的问题。从这个意义上说，这项工作提出了使用合成星像（模拟天空），并结合通用验证方法学的标准化结构作为设计方法的基础。目的是通过提供标准验证方法来组织项目，加快开发时间。通过两种方法减少未来的返工：一个免费软件许可证下共享的验证平台；以及通用验证方法学的布局通过面向对象的方法强制代码的可重用性。我们为验证平台提出了一个具有标准接口的黑盒结构，并提供了一些示例，展示了如何将这种方法应用于小型卫星星跟踪器的开发，目标是片上系统设计。相同的测试台既应用于早期的纯软件概念实现，也应用于后来的优化软件-硬件混合系统，采用硬件在环配置。这种测试台重用策略也很有趣，可以展示开发平台的回归测试能力。此外，还使用模拟器注入特定噪声，以便在某些实际条件下评估系统。
