Infrared Earth sensors are widely used in attitude-determination and control systems of satellites. The main deficiency of static infrared Earth sensors is the requirement of a small field of view (FOV). A typical FOV for a static infrared Earth sensor is about 20° to 30°, which may not be sufficient for low-Earth-orbiting micro-satellites. A novel compact infrared Earth sensor with an FOV of nearly 180° is developed here. The Earth sensor comprises a panoramic annular lens (PAL) and an off-the-shelf camera with an uncooled complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) infrared sensor. PAL is used to augment FOV so as to obtain a complete infrared image of the Earth from low-Earth-orbit. An algorithm is developed to compensate for the distortion caused by PAL and to calculate the vector of the Earth. The new infrared Earth sensor is compact with low power consumption and high precision. Simulated images and on-orbit infrared images obtained via the micro-satellite ZDPS-2 are used to assess the performance of the new infrared Earth sensor. Experiments show that the accuracy of the Earth sensor is about 0.032°.

红外传感器广泛用于卫星的姿态确定和控制系统中。静态红外地球传感器的主要缺陷是需要小视场（FOV）。静态红外地球传感器的典型视场角约为20°至30°，这可能不足以满足低地球轨道微卫星的需求。在此开发了一种新颖的紧凑型红外地球传感器，其视场角接近180°。地球传感器包括全景环形透镜（PAL）和带有未冷却的互补金属氧化物半导体（CMOS）红外传感器的现成相机。PAL用于增强视场，以便从低地球轨道获得地球的完整红外图像。开发了一种算法来补偿由PAL引起的失真并计算地球矢量。新型红外地球传感器结构紧凑，功耗低，精度高。通过微卫星ZDPS-2获得的模拟图像和在轨红外图像用于评估新型红外地球传感器的性能。实验表明，地球传感器的精度约为0.032°。