Spacefibre IMPLementation design test Equipment (SIMPLE)

Project Information

SIMPLE

Grant agreement ID: 757038

DOI

10.3030/757038

Project closed

EC signature date 10 January 2017

Start date 1 February 2017

End date 31 January 2019

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies – Space

Total cost

€ 912 930,00

EU contribution

€ 639 051,00

Coordinated by

INGENIARS SRL
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SIMPLE (Spacefibre IMPLementation design test Equipment (SIMPLE))

Reporting period: 2018-02-01 to 2019-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Following the success of SpaceWire, SpaceFibre (SpFi) is the new communication standard being finalised by the European Space Agency (ESA) to address very high data-rate (beyond 2Gbps) links on board of satellites as required by current and forthcoming space missions. While ESA is leading the finalisation of the standard through European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS), IngeniArs (member of the ECSS board) aims at industrialising compliant products.
The ambitious goal of SIMPLE is to bring IngeniArs SpFi advanced prototype (TRL6, outcome of SME-INST-1 project) to TRL9 with the industrialisation of three products:
- SpFi IP-core: a macro-cell to be integrated into customer’s FPGA/ASIC designs;
- SpFi Analyser Box: a standalone ground equipment to test and validate SpFi-based systems;
- SpFi Analyser PXI: an embedded module to be integrated in customer’s ground equipment featuring PXI interface.
This way, Aerospace industries will be provided with all the necessary off-the-shelf products to speed-up the development and testing of aerospace systems with high-speed communication requirements. This will be beneficial also for a larger group of stakeholders such as the EC, EU member state governments and their space agencies, the scientific and industrial space community, leading to an advancement of Europe in this strategic aerospace field.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The first objective of SIMPLE project was achieved within the first reporting period: the SpaceFibre (SpFi) IP-core design is now complete and the IP-core is currently part of IngeniArs products portfolio, ready for the commercialization. The SpFi IP-core is used as a building block for the other two products comprised in SIMPLE: the SpFi Analyser Box and the SpFi Analyser PXI. The development of the SpFi Analyser Box and the SpFi Analyser PXI, which represents the second and third objective of SIMPLE respectively, has been closed during the second reporting period. These devices serve as reference equipment for testing and validating any design/product related to SpFi and are therefore key components for the development of such technology. SIMPLE products are key components in different project opportunities which see IngeniArs as part of a consortium of European companies in the space sector.
As part of SIMPLE dissemination and exploitation strategy, the SpFi IP-core, the SpFi Analyser Box and the SpFi Analyser PXI have been advertised in all IngeniArs dissemination and exploitation activities. Face to face meetings with prime companies in the Aerospace field were organised over the 2 years of the project to present IngeniArs SIMPLE outcome and the company developments in terms of products portfolio. Feedbacks received from potential customers have been taken into account and evaluated in terms of effective implementation on IngeniArs solutions. In addition, IngeniArs organized on 24th April 2018 an international Workshop in Pisa titled “The present and the future of high-speed interfaces for satellite on-board data systems”. The aim of the workshop was to promote SIMPLE project, SpaceFibre diffusion over Europe and demonstrate IngeniArs commitment to SpaceFibre technology. Several institutions, such as ASI and ESA, and big players of the aerospace market joined the workshop.
All the specific objectives foreseen by SIMPLE project were successfully achieved.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The novelty of SIMPLE goes together with the novelty of the SpaceFibre standard which has been announced by ESA as the future standardised means to cope with high-reliability and very high data-rate communications on-board the satellite. The ad-hoc solutions implemented so far into existing missions – mainly based on non-European technologies – will be replaced by a common approach, which offers a high re-usability among different designs and missions. The ambitious goal of SIMPLE is therefore to provide a complete easy-to-use package to design, build and validate SpaceFibre-based systems. SIMPLE products will allow the customer to reduce the development time of the on-board units based on SpaceFibre by at least 50%.
SIMPLE project contributes also to a general advancement of the European technology for the aerospace sector, which has always been considered strategic by stakeholders such as the European Commission, European governments and their space agencies, the scientific and industrial space communities.

SIMPLE_logo

Conceptual map of the product lines generated by the SIMPLE project and their use cases