EVALUATION OF COMMERCIAL-OFF-THE-SHELF EVENTBASED CAMERAS FOR SPACE SURVEILLANCE APPLICATIONS
AIR FORCE RESEARCH LABORATORY
Peter N. McMahon-Crabtree and David G. Monet
ABSTRACT
Event-based cameras (EBCs) are of interest for potential application to space domain awareness (SDA). EBC attributes including asynchronous response and low-latency provide data reduction, break the trade-off between latency and power, and enable consideration of additional algorithms and processing architectures due to individual timestamps for each event. Potential data reduction by a factor of 10 or greater is particularly attractive for SDA from satellite platforms with constraints on system power, processing, and communication bandwidth. Here we report our initial evaluation of Prophesee 3rd-generation commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) EBCs, including development of, and comparison with, a limiting magnitude model. The analytic model is a function of sky background radiance; EBC parameters including contrast threshold, dark current, pixel pitch, and spectral quantum efficiency; and the optic aperture diameter and focal length. Using an 85 mm f/1.4 lens, the measured detection limits for the HVGA-EM and VGA-CD EBCs are 6.9 and 9.8 visual magnitudes (mV), respectively, at a sky background level of about 20.3 mV per square arcsecond. The empirical sensitivity limit for the VGA differs by 0.1 mV from our analytic prediction of 9.7 (less than 10% difference in flux). The limiting magnitude model assumes slow motion of point objects across the EBC focal plane array.
