Onboard rough estimation of point source coordinates for linear IR-sensor

Abstract

This paper describes the relatively simple algorithm for quick calculating rough estimators of point source coordinates within an image formed by onboard IR-sensor having the line of photoelements with interlaced photosensitive squares. It is assumed that the diameter of the light spot from the point object is equal to the size of the photoelement. The algorithm based on the iterative least square method uses the model which describes the cases when the spot is put on both three and two squares, small quantity of samples for channel impulses, voltage shifts and correlated white noise for each photoelement. The experiments have shown that the suggested algorithm provides with accuracy of point source coordinates up to few hundredth of the square size that allows replacing routine processing of whole image.