Field Programmable Gate Array-Based Acceleration Algorithm Design for Dynamic Star Map Parallel Computing

The dynamic star simulator is a commonly used ground-test calibration device for star sensors. For the problems of slow calculation speed, low integration, and high power consumption in the traditional star chart simulation method, this paper designs a FPGA-based star chart display algorithm for a dynamic star simulator. The design adopts the USB 2.0 protocol to obtain the attitude data, uses the SDRAM to cache the attitude data and video stream, extracts the effective navigation star points by searching the starry sky equidistant right ascension and declination partitions, and realizes the pipelined displaying of the star map by using the parallel computing capability of the FPGA. Test results show that under the conditions of chart field of view of Φ20° and simulated magnitude of 2.0∼6.0 Mv, the longest time for calculating a chart is 72 μs under the clock of 148.5 MHz, which effectively improves the chart display speed of the dynamic star simulator. The FPGA-based star map display algorithm gets rid of the dependence of the existing algorithm on the computer, reduces the volume and power consumption of the dynamic star simulator, and realizes the miniaturization and portable demand of the dynamic star simulator.