ScOSA - Scalable On-Board Computing for Space Avionics

Paper number

IAC-18,B4,6A,8,x46042

Author

Mr. Carl Treudler, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Dr. Heike Benninghoff, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Kai Borchers, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Bernhard Brunner, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Jan Cremer, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Michael Dumke, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Thomas Gärtner, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Kilian Höflinger, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Jörg Langwald, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Daniel Lüdtke, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Ms. Ting Peng, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Eicke-Alexander Risse, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Dr. Kurt Schwenk, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Martin Stelzer, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Moritz Ulmer, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Simon Vellas, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Coauthor

Mr. Karsten Westerdorff, Germany, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Year

2018

Abstract

Computational demands on spacecraft have continuously increased for years
whereby available space qualified hardware is not capable of satisfying these
requirements completely. This paper introduces a way to overcome this problem by
combining highly reliable space qualified hardware with highly performant
commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components. This combination of hardware enabled
us to develop a new type of on-board computing (OBC) system, called
ScOSA (Scalable On-Board Computing for Space Avionics).

A ScOSA system uses a distributed approach whereas it consists of multiple
nodes. They are classified as reliable or high performance nodes. The reliable
nodes are based on radiation-hardened Leon3 processors, the high-performance nodes
on COTS Xilinx Zynq (CPU and FPGA). All nodes are connected by a SpaceWire
network with a meshed topology that provides redundant data paths to establish
fault tolerance. A large number of existing systems can be connected to our
system given that SpaceWire is widely used within the space domain.

ScOSA has additional capabilities during operation that set it apart from traditional
on-board computing systems. During runtime a dynamic reconfiguration of the
whole system can be performed. By this, faulty nodes can be removed or recovered
nodes can be reintegrated into the system. Additionally, computation tasks
can be started, stopped or shifted between all active nodes. Also, connected
FPGAs can be reprogrammed. As a consequence, these reconfiguration capabilities
can be used to fulfill changing requirements without exchanging the underlying
hardware. This can also be used to handle different spacecraft modes or mission
phases.

The contribution of this paper is to explain the details of the ScOSA
architecture, implementation and its functionality. Additionally, we will
show the results of running representative applications from the space
robotics, earth-observation and satellite avionics domains.
These applications were selected for evaluating the system capabilities
and include, among others, autonomous navigation and capture operations,
stereo image processing and optical ship detection. Testing and demonstration
will be done in Hardware-in-the-Loop simulators or on robotic
testbeds (namely DLR's EPOS and OOS-Sim).

Abstract document

IAC-18,B4,6A,8,x46042.brief.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-18,B4,6A,8,x46042.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.