Sailors have been triangulating off stars to navigate the oceans for thousands of years, and star trackers operate in GPS-denied environments and are free from the cumulative drift and accuracy loss of inertial navigation systems. The autonomous vehicles industry is currently bottlenecked by the lack of a long-range low-light-level vision sensor solution operating under all weather conditions. Highly sensitive image sensors are, therefore, the critical enabling component addressing the needs of both star trackers and autonomous vehicle vision sensors. We propose our Photon-Sensing Integrated Circuit (PSIC) image sensor featuring minimal size, weight, power consumption and cost (SWaP-C) for next-generation star trackers. During Phase I Base, we will prove the concept of the proposed BiCMOS PSIC. During Phase I Option, we will start the fabrication calibration of key semiconductor process steps for prototyping during Phase II. During Phase II, we will fabricate, characterize, demonstrate and deliver (up to 3 units of) prototype BiCMOS PSIC image sensors. During Phase III, we will simultaneously optimize the PSIC and productize and commercialize for dual-use applications including star trackers. Additionally, as an alternative approach, the PSIC focal plane array (FPA) can also serve as bipolar jots interfacing Prof. Dr. Eric R. Fossums Quanta Image Sensor (QIS) readout integrated circuit (ROIC).
