A Star Pattern Recognition Algorithm Based on the Radial Companion-Circumferential Feature

Attitude measurement is an important core technology of vehicle flight. It is of great significance to ensure the vehicle’s accurate orbit entry and orbit change, high-performance flight, reliable ground communication, high-precision ground observation, and successful completion of various space missions. Star sensor is the core component to realize an autonomous attitude measurement of the vehicle. Autonomous star map recognition is a key technology in star sensor technology, and it is also the focus and difficulty of research. When the star sensor enters the initial attitude acquisition mode, according to the algorithm, the star sensor can quickly obtain the initial attitude and enter the normal working mode. This paper proposes a star pattern recognition algorithm based on the radial companion-circumferential feature with a noise compensation code to address the low recognition rate caused by position noise in the process of constructing star patterns in the traditional star pattern recognition algorithm based on the radial feature. In order to solve the problem of slow matching search speed, a maximum matching number algorithm has been innovatively adopted, which can improve the search efficiency in the process of star pattern recognition. Thus, the capacity of the star pattern recognition feature library is effectively reduced, and the stability and recognition rate of the improved star pattern recognition algorithm are further improved. The improved star pattern recognition algorithm first establishes radial and circumferential feature vectors based on the bit vector, then adds the noise compensation code according to the companion star position error, then modifies the radial and circumferential feature vectors, and finally calculates the minimum similarity difference between the feature vector of the star pattern observed by the star sensor and the feature vector of the navigation star in the feature library to obtain the unique star pattern recognition result. The identification star database adopts the maximum matching number algorithm, which can improve the search efficiency, reduce the amount of redundant matching, and shorten the matching time. The simulation results show that even in the presence of star position and magnitude noise, the improved star pattern recognition algorithm with radial companion-circumferential feature maintains a high recognition rate of more than 97 percent, demonstrating that the algorithm’s robustness is superior to other algorithms. The revised method described in this work outperforms the classic triangle algorithm and the radial feature star pattern recognition algorithm without compensation code in terms of algorithm robustness, recognition success rate, and recognition time.