Azimuth measurement by means of optical detector arrays

An azimuth measurement by means of Optical Detector Arrays (ODA) is investigated. A simple heuristic algorithm for processing of the ODA-output signal is proposed and the resulting measurement accuracy is evaluated. It is shown that the accuracy of the heuristic algorithm is close to the accuracy of the optimum maximum likelihood algorithm, provided the signal-to-noise ratio is sufficiently high. An experimental system for azimuth measurement is described. The system consists of an eight-element ODA, a PDP minicomputer, and the software package. The ODA is constructed from unmatched detectors, and the background intensity is different on different detectors. Nevertheless, the experimental system is capable of providing a relative measurement accuracy of 2 percent thus indicating the robustness of the suggested measurement algorithm.