ELECTRONIC IMAGE STABILIZATION

In an optical guidance system, body fixed electronic image stabilization of television imaging is used to allow strapdown seeker guidance in a missile. Electronic image stabilization eliminates the need for a stabilized sensor or seeker platform while providing the same line-of-sight information that would have been obtained from the platform. Body fixed electronic image stabilization compensates for routine vibrational and rotational motion experienced by a missile airframe during flight. This compensation is accomplished by deliberately underscanning the camera and driving the camera's deflection coils with signals from pitch and yaw body rate sensors on the missile. The image developed on the camera detector raster is thereby moved in an equal and opposite direction to the sensed, experienced, motion during the same instant that the motion is occuring. Compensation thus stabilizes the resultant image, which would otherwise be a blur of motion on the display screen.