Visible Blind Quadrant Sun Position Sensor in a Silicon Carbide Technology

In this paper, we present a quadrant sun position sensor microsystem device in a silicon carbide technology that operates in a field-of-view of ±33° and reaches a mean error of 1.9° in this range. This will allow, for the first time, an inherently visible blind sun position sensor in a CMOS compatible technology. Opto-electronic integration of the photodetectors and CMOS readout circuitry on-chip is vital to compete with the performance of silicon state-of-the-art and for the concept to be adopted by industry, which is where previous implementations of visible blind sun sensors are lacking.