Aerospace Electronics

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Harald Michalik
• Subject Area: Computer Architecture, Embedded and Massively Parallel Systems
• Term: from 2013 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 206480214

The current common practice of payload data handling in aerospace systems relies on simple data compression, performed by pre-assigned, dedicated units. This approach cannot meet the increasing requirements on flexibility at reasonable costs. In future, space missions will have to handle very high data rates due to increased spatial, radiometric and time resolutions of payload instruments. To be able to handle this amount of data, final physical values will have to be extracted in real time by an autonomous, intelligent and reliable application already on board the spacecraft, adapting itself to the changing needs. This research proposal suggests a novel approach to the design of aerospace electronic systems by developing a controlled change aerospace application under the challenging constraints of a space mission, i.e. high safety, reliability and availability but also taking into account real-time requirements. One potential application is the German demonstration mission DEOS, in which a maintenance satellite shall catch unstable satellites. For this purpose, a high performance computing platform and part of the application software has to be provided for the experimental robot platform, which must continuously be changed in functionality to adapt the system to the necessary set of tasks. The introduced system is based on a scalable and reliable architecture of processing modules, coupled via a dedicated network. Since also the single modules of the system are reconfigurable, mechanisms to control concurrent change of modules jointly developed in the research unit Controlling Concurrent Change must be instantiated and controlled at different levels. The exchange of single modules has to be possible without modifying the overall system, i.e. without degrading the once achieved qualification for functionality, performance and external behavior. The possibility of autonomous change in the spacecraft will give a new quality to support adaptive systems running on hardware with high error rates, which communicate via weak and often delayed links to earth based control. An autonomy using the mechanisms developed in CCC would, therefore, be highly beneficial for many challenging future space missions. The applicants will perform detailed analysis of relevant requirements for a range of aerospace applications. Following, a reconfigurable processing module is adapted to demonstrate the performance of the approach to the challenging aerospace requirements for resource consumption, safety, reliability and availability.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 1800: Controlling Concurrent Change (CCC)