A new micro-satellite CCD camera controller design

A space camera is essentially constituted of a sensor which transforms the optical signals into electric ones and a control and command system where, amongst other, the operations of clocks generation, amplification and digitalisation of the video signal are done. Finally the images obtained are stored in memories. The design of such systems tries to achieve a high level integration of the maximum functions on a single chip in order to reduce the number of components, thus minimizing power consumption and saving space and weight onboard. This is made possible by the creation of entirely VLSI reconfigurable and programmable components such as the Programmable Field Gate Array (FPGA) and the Application Specific Integrated Circuits (Asics) which are now commonly used on-board spacecraft because of their abilities to resist to the harsh radiation in space environment. The actual levels of performances and qualities are more than satisfactory (more than 20 FPGA circuits were used on the Mars Pathfinder robot). The aim of this work is the design, In a hardware-in-loop approach, of Simulink modules able to generate control commands and clocks signals for a three bands multispectral camera using CCD sensors. Once the Simulink based controller is designed, it drives the start & end acquisition settings and the relative exposure times of the three CCD channels (Red, Green and Blue). This study was done using a Kodak KLI-10203 sensor.