Tuesday 16 October 2018
SAVOIR [9:00 – 18:00]
Background
A significant effort is being deployed by Agencies and Industry to streamline the development, validation and operation phases of spacecraft, with particular focus on the Avionics. This effort is being coordinated by ESA in the form of the "Spacecraft Avionics Open Interface Architecture" (SAVOIR) initiative. SAVOIR brings together ESA and industry experts in an open forum and is gaining significant momentum. Based on establishment of reference architectures, it provides the ground for the identification of building blocks interacting through standardised interfaces, service access points and protocols across hardware and software boundaries.
Objective
The objective of this annual SAVOIR session is to update the avionics stakeholders with the progress done over the last year and to discuss the next steps.
Organisation
A programme has been defined during the SAVOIR Advisory Group (SAG) meetings held in 2017:
- Status of the working groups (FDIR, MASAIS, Union, FAIRE, AUTOCODE, Operability)
- SAVOIR activities status and documents update
- Status and challenges of Multicore HW/SW co-design solutions (CoRA, NGMP, Dahlia, TASTE, Panda)
Wednesday 17 October 2018
Command & Control Interfaces: status quo and medium/long term evolution [9:00 – 13:00]
The Spacecraft Command and Control interface interconnects the platform and payload processing and space-ground communication resources with on-board entities which act as data producers/consumers or sensors or actuators
The entities can be:
- Platform sensors/actuators with a direct interface to the command and control interface,
- Platform Data Concentrators (RTU/RIU) which then interface platform sensors/actuators,
- Platform subsystems units (e.g. PCDU) which generate housekeeping telemetry and enable to set the configuration of their subsystem (e.g. switch on/off LCLs)
- Payload units which generate housekeeping telemetry and/or set the configuration of the payload. Examples are : Payload dedicated Input/output concentrator (Payload RTU/RIU, PLIU) Payload devices such as Channel Amplifiers in a telecommunication payload
The Command & Control interface is in general implemented as two data buses, one dedicated to platform entities and another one for payload entities.
Throughput/Bandwidth needs are generally limited such that implementation solutions belong to the “low speed data bus” family (a few hundreds of kbps). However in specific cases fast data buses have been baselined to transfer higher amount of data, this is the case of few classes of launchers.
Protocols are requested to provide determinism to be compatible with control laws of up to several tens of Hz.
Current solutions are the following:
- MIL-STD-1553B
- CAN bus,
- SpaceWire point to point and routed links,
- SpaceFibre point to point and routed links,
- Time Triggered Ethernet (launcher and space transportation vehicle)
The session will start from an overview of existing solutions and will aim to collect needs and required evolutions to cope with requirements defined by new missions (HRE, SCI, EO, TLC ) and new architectures (SAVOIR Union, SAVOIR OBC 2.0)
PYThON (Put Your Thesis ON) [14:00-15:30]
In order to shorten and enforce the link between projects and academic institutions this session has been introduced to give PhD students the possibility to present in 5 minutes summary of their thesis or research subject related to Avionics, Data Handling, Software or AOCS.
Among the presented topics there will be an award for the most relevant and promising one, to be assigned by the Board Committee.
For this session presenters are not requested to submit a full paper. The presentation (or the thesis if available) shall be provided free from any property rights.
The presenters are encouraged to physically attend the conference at ESTEC. Special cases of remote attendance can be considered pending agreement with Board Committee
Interactive Session [15:30-18:00]
The session is meant to provide open and interactive discussion about several topics of interest, spanning potentially several disciplines. The session will be run as described below:
Four Topics have been selected and they will be briefly introduced by selected moderators:
- Digital engineering/transformation
- Autonomy and operation
- COTS avionics
- Security.
To stimulate interaction, dedicated panels will be set-up for each topic. Around these panels attendees are encouraged to actively discuss the subjects with the help of the moderator, addressing in particular the Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) of each topic. Attendees are encouraged to walk between the topics and participate in several discussions.
At the end of the session the moderators will draw the conclusions for each Main Topic that will be eventually presented to the audience.
Thursday 18 October 2018
MicroSat & NanoSat AOCS & GNC Avionics Architecture [9:00 – 12:30]
The increasing interest and deployments of satellites with mass < 250kg (MicroSat and NanoSat) in several different areas of application deserves dedicated session where the key aspects of avionics focused on AOCS architecture will be explored.
The sessions aim also to identify and present the main differences wrt the bigger platforms for different fields of application, driven by the need to implement significant reduction factor but keep the focus on achievable performance.
Several companies that provides MicroSat/NanoSat platforms will be asked to present their AOCS avionics products and architectures with focusing on performance aspects related to AOCS. The session will describe how the compromise between size/mass and achievable performance has been approached and solved.
Taking the leap into deep space exploration is the next challenge for Micro Sat teams. The second part of the session will focus on Micro and Nano satellites avionics products and architectures for this type of application.
In specific, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for self-learning is considered a way forward and some of its possible applications in this area of interest will be presented.
Electronic Data Sheets (EDS) [13:30 – 16:35]
An integral part of the spacecraft development process is the population of the spacecraft database with information related to the interfaces of individual units. This is a significant task involving the manual entry of enormous amounts of data. The content of the information, which is provided by unit suppliers to the Primes, is not standardised and subject to inconsistencies, immaturity and incompleteness, and this could clearly be harmful to system development.
A way forward has been identified within the SAVOIR initiative in the form of electronic data sheets (EDS). If the paper Interface Control Document (ICD) traditionally provided by unit suppliers is supplemented, and ultimately replaced, by a standard machine readable input, then the whole process of database input can be automated. In addition, pre-checks can be made on the completeness and accuracy of the provided information.
An ESA led activity addresses the definition of EDS, but also the question of how to address its implementation and acceptability in industrial processes. Although this activity initially limits the scope to functional and data handling aspects (i.e. TM/TC ICD), it is intended to be gradually extended to cover also also electrical, thermal, mechanical disciplines.
Initial coordination between space system integrators has taken place, and this session is intended to ensure that needs of other (industrial) stakeholders (such as suppliers) are also well understood and can be taken into account. Dedicated presentations will highlight the associated expectations and needs.
Conclusion [16:35 – 17:00]
