Speakers
Description
Title: Software Interlocks in the METASAT Project
Authors:
Eckart Göhler, Alfred Hönle; OHB System AG, Manfred-Fuchs-Str. 1, D-82234 Weßling, Germany
Leonidas Kosmidis; BSC, Calle Jordi Girona 31, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
In space domain a large number of requirements arising from the harsh environment, the non-availability of on-site repair measures and the drastic effects of failures typicaly impose high demands on the overall system, be it a satellite instrument or a life support module in manned flights. The corresponding system development procedures and architectures may respond with different measures like development standards or architectures with redundancies. A special topic is the introduction of an interlock to prevent degradation or loss of an instrument.
In the METASAT project a solution to establish an interlock is being proposed by employing a dedicated software architecture on top of a Hypervisor. Additionally, we propose how this solution will scale with high-performance on-board data processing.
In general, the separation of the software in different partitions helps to reduce the V&V effort and to focus on the intended functionality. Furthermore, with the proposed solution the critical functionality in interlock software partitions is kept simple while the application software could be kept at medium criticality and thus lower burden on the V&V requirements.
