Adaptive communicaiton return channels for teleoperated spacecraft - Evaluation of ressource-saving potentials

• Applicant: Dr.-Ing. Jan Harder
• Subject Area: Automation, Mechatronics, Control Systems, Intelligent Technical Systems, Robotics
• Term: from 2014 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 253249483

The proposed research projects deals with the area of communication links for teleoperated spacecraft. Teleoperation systems rely on in most cases bidirectional communication systems linking a human operator and the remote controlled system (teleoperator). These links consist of forward links transmitting user inputs from the human to the teleoperator and return links for transmitting sensor data in the opposite direction. The strict limitation of spacecraft systems with respect to size, weight and power require tradeoffs between user requirements (high quality of service) and the needed resources (low resource consumption). This especially holds true for the return link usually requiring higher bandwidths. Previous missions demonstrating the teleoperation of spacecraft have shown the high importance of the communication quality of service for the situational awareness of the operator.Previous research work at the institute of astronautics have led to the assumption that the requirements for the return channel of such communication systems for teleoperated systems change significantly over different mission phases and tasks. These changing requirements occur for the data sources (sensors) as well as for the communication link itself. Depending of parameters like the current operational task, relative position and velocity, or environmental conditions the required bandwidth or bit error ratio changes.Yet still many communication systems used in spaceflight use fixed configurations, partially due to the high reliability requirements for such systems. In the dynamic scenarios of teleoperated spacecraft they can be over or under provisioned throughout sustained periods of mission time. One possible remedy for this problem is an adaptive communication return channel. Such an adaptive return channel could adjust itself according to the changing requirements and thus consume as much resources as necessary while still providing high situational awareness for the operator. This could lead to a lower resource consumption when compared to fixed configurations.Subsequently it is the goal of this research project to quantify the amount of on-board resources that can be saved by employing an adaptive return channel. To achieve this goal, different system designs of such an adaptive return channel will be developed, including the data source configuration as well as the spacecraft communication system. The developed designs will be integrated into an existing simulation environment to perform a series of evaluation tests comparing the designs with respect to their resource saving potential. The simulated missions will include typical proximity operation tasks as approach, circumvention, inspection and docking.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants