A solar cell unit for small satellite’s attitude determination based on Sun vector

John K. Rojas, Antero Castro, Miguel A. Chicchón, Elizabeth R. Villota

Centro de Tecnologías de Información y Comunicaciones - CTIC, Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Lima, Perú

jkrojasp@uni.pe, acastron@uni.pe, mchicchona@uni.pe, elvillota@gmail.com

Sensor implementation is an important phase in attitude determination. Satellite projects according to CubeSat standards necessitate
miniaturized sensors. When not available in the market, or not affordable, those sensors need to be fabricated. At Universidad Nacional de
Ingeniería, within the development of the one-unit CubeSat picosatellite Chasqui I, a solar cell unit appropriate for attitude estimation of small
satellites has been designed, assembled and tested. This solar cell unit is characterized by the use of COTS components. Importantly, the
electronic design considers the limitations of low-cost components and the requirements of the attitude determination system. Several tests have
been conducted on the solar cell unit in order to determine the relation between solar radiation and solar cell inclination angle.

Keywords: silicon solar cells, microcontroller, cosine characteristic

1. Introduction

The solar cell unit has been implemented based on the

calculation of the angle of incidence, which is useful for
determining the attitude of small satellites.

The solar cell unit design incorporate two parts: the solar
radiation acquisition and the data handling. The solar radiation
acquisition is responsible for receiving Sun radiation and
converting it to an analog voltage signal, suitable for further
processing. A silicon solar cell, and a current sensor are the
components of this part. The resulting analog voltage
information, proportional to the incident radiation, is sent to a
microcontroller’s A/D converter. Fig. 1. Cosine detector solar cell

The data handling part includes a microcontroller and is (1)

responsible for the integration and processing of signals
coming from the solar radiation. Its main objective is to
calculate the angle between the incoming sunlight vector and
an axis normal to the sensor surface, the radiation incidence
angle. For this, the solar cell current and radiation incidence
angle relation, determined experimentally and properly
adjusted for errors, is employed; the solar cell current values
are provided by the solar radiation part. The incidence angle
can be used in the calculation of the solar vector, information
required by the attitude determination system.
2. Sensor Description
The sun sensor has been studied for its implementation is a
cosine detector due to the sinusoidal variation of the output
current of silicon solar cell with the angle of incidence. In
figure 1 the energy deposited in the photocell due to solar
radiation and, consequently, the output current, I, is
proportional to the cosine of the angle of incidence of solar
radiation [1].
In equation (1) I(0) corresponds to the maximum current when
radiation is normal to surface of the solar cell.
3. Analysis and Design of Solar Cell Unit
In figure 2 shows the configuration of the sun sensor using a
silicon cell, short-circuit current of 25mA to 1000W/m2,
which is arranged in short-circuit mode, and placing a small
resistor between the output terminals of the cell. With this
current the current is converted into voltage, given by
equation (2) which is acquired and amplified by the
MAX4372-T, this is a current sensor with accuracy
amplification gain (G) equal 20, obtaining the voltage VO,
given the equation (3). This voltage is input to the A/D
converter of MCF51QE128 microcontroller, which performs
the conversion to 12-bit binary format, this value has been
used to calculate the angle between the Sun vector of the cell
and an axis normal to the cell surface, which is named angle
of incidence.
The final relationship between the output signal to the
microcontroller and the input current of the solar solar cell is
shown in equation (4).
Considering the conditions of radiation in low orbit (LEO),
where the average radiation intensity is approximately 1300

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W/m2, the value of resistor RS is set to 2Ω. 4. Test and results of solar cell unit’s characteristics

4.1 Test diagram

In figure 5 below shows the block diagram of the test
conducted to measure the angle of incidence, for it has been
used solar sensor, formed by the solar cell, the current sensor
and the microcontroller for sending data acquired from the
sensor. To control the angle of incidence has been used a
rotating platform, with which it has been established for
measuring angles in steps of 4.7 °. To control the rotating
platform and the receiving solar sensor data has been used a
PC Laptop, which has recorded all data on the development of
Fig. 2. Sun sensor electronic configuration
the test.
(2)
(3)
(4)

In figure 3 shows the schematic diagram of the section on

current sensor, and Fig. shows the solar cell board the current
sensor board, this includes six of the current sensing circuits,
due to later be used for data acquisition six solar cells located
on the sides of the satellite.

Fig. 5. Test diagram of Sun sensor unit characteristic

calibration

4.2 Test procedure

For the start of the test scenario was installed as shown in

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of current sensor figure 6 testing, and positioning the solar cell in the direction
normal to solar radiation. The location of the cell on the
platform can be seen in figure 7.

The experiment was performed at noon on a sunny day

because the altitude changes slowly and very few clouds that
may stop the test, another factor that was considered is the
radiation that is found near the 1000W/m2. Under these
conditions, measurements made with the control of the rotary
platform, acquiring 250 samples for each angular step, in step
19 the cell is positioned at the angle of 90 °.

In each rotation, the sensor output data stored in a laptop

while the output current of the solar cell was measured and
stored in the precision multimeter FLUKE.

Fig. 4. Sun sensor board

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 Fig. 6. Test scenario of Sun sensor unit

1. Silicon solar cell

2. Rotatory platform
3. Attitude Determination board
4. FLUKE Multimeter
5. UART-USB interface Fig. 9. Output error characteristic
6. PC laptop
5. Conclusions

- The short circuit current in the cell decreases as the

angle of incidence varies from the sun. This variation
is the current that provides information on the
orientation of the satellite to the sun.

- The short circuit current in the cell is different for

different values of solar radiation. If solar radiation
is higher than the greater the current short-circuit.

Fig. 7. Location of solar cell in the platform
With the acquired data we proceeded to make the
adjustment cosine solar sensor, for it was found cosine
graph closest to the data, equation (5), which fits well the
data obtained in the field of view (FOV) of 19 ° to 85 °.
- For performance tests of the cells should be
considered to always be a small error in
measurement due to the reflection of sunlight on
other surfaces in the environment where testing is
conducted, figure 10.

(5)

De los resultados de la prueba del sensor solar se

realizó el análisis de ajuste cosenoidal del sensor
solar, el mejor ajuste se observa en la Fig.

Fig. 10. Effects of reflective surface.

References
[1] James R. Wertz, S.: Attitude Determination and Control, Members of
the Technical Staff-Attitude Systems Operation-Computer Sciences
Corporation, pp. 156-158.

Fig. 8. Sun sensor output vs. angle of incidence
According to this expression, the maximum error is at 62°,
figure 9 where the difference is the theoretical value of
34.5mV which represents 6% error.
[2] Su-Jeoung Kim, Sun-Ok Kim, Byoung-Young Moon, Young-Keun
Chang, Hwa-Suk Oh, S.: Development of Ultra-Light 2-axes Sun
sensor for small satellite, Space System Research Lab, Hankuk
Aviation University.

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[3] Yonatan Winetraub, San Bitan, Yuval Nativ, Dr Anna B. Heller, S.:
Attitude Determination – Advanced Sun Sensors for Pico Satellites,
Handasaim School, Tel-Aviv University.