Periodic Reporting for period 3 - Hi-SIDE (High-Speed Integrated Satellite Data Systems For Leading EU Industry)
Reporting period: 2020-04-01 to 2022-06-30
Advanced data chain technologies are crucial for future satellite systems dedicated to environmental and biodiversity monitoring, agriculture, climate research, providing safe and secure communication infrastructures in remote areas, and to the management of emergency scenarios. Multispectral and hyperspectral imaging is recognised as a key enabling technology for several space borne and airborne remote sensing applications such as precision agriculture, environmental monitoring, surveillance, security and more. A key element for both natural and man-made disasters is the monitoring of events and their impacts by high resolution EO satellite missions, which requires gathering this data with the lowest latency.
The European and world-wide trend is to mature application-oriented technologies in the domains of Earth observation (EO), satellite navigation and satellite communications, which are facing a steady increase of performance. These growing mission requirements need an answer at system and equipment level by further miniaturisation, integration and break-through of data handling technologies. The Hi-SIDE project aimed to assist in this mission by developing a suite of integrated technologies for the high-speed management, processing, and transfer of large amounts satellite data, such as the data collected by Earth Observation satellites.
The specific objectives of Hi-SIDE were to design new high speed data management systems including on-board payload data-processing technology, on-board high-speed data storage, adaptive, reconfigurable, multi-Gbit/s inter-spacecraft data transfer and downlink systems, on-board data compression systems and adaptive data reduction techniques and a high-performance on-board network technology, and to integrate and demonstrate these systems in an end to end data chain supporting an input data-rate from instruments of 50 Gbps and an output data-rate to the downlink of 10 Gbit/s.
The project made substantial advances in the performance of individual components of the data chain, including the development of: a high-performance, high-reliability and high-availability network to interconnect the data chain elements, a modular data compression system which can process the very high instrument data rates foreseen for future EO missions, a high performance very versatile payload processing unit that can be programmed on the fly, in 40us; a high-rate RF downlink transmitter is used for high speed data transmission from earth observation or data relay satellites to the ground and an optical terminal system that supports high speed data links and optical downlinks.
Whilst these individual advances represent significant improvements to current satellite payload technologies, Hi-SIDEs main innovation is the delivery of a complete data chain architecture to handle an aggregate instrument data-rate of at least 50 Gbps in the near term, together with a roadmap to achieve even higher performance in the future.
The European and world-wide trend is to mature application-oriented technologies in the domains of Earth observation (EO), satellite navigation and satellite communications, which are facing a steady increase of performance. These growing mission requirements need an answer at system and equipment level by further miniaturisation, integration and break-through of data handling technologies. The Hi-SIDE project aimed to assist in this mission by developing a suite of integrated technologies for the high-speed management, processing, and transfer of large amounts satellite data, such as the data collected by Earth Observation satellites.
The specific objectives of Hi-SIDE were to design new high speed data management systems including on-board payload data-processing technology, on-board high-speed data storage, adaptive, reconfigurable, multi-Gbit/s inter-spacecraft data transfer and downlink systems, on-board data compression systems and adaptive data reduction techniques and a high-performance on-board network technology, and to integrate and demonstrate these systems in an end to end data chain supporting an input data-rate from instruments of 50 Gbps and an output data-rate to the downlink of 10 Gbit/s.
The project made substantial advances in the performance of individual components of the data chain, including the development of: a high-performance, high-reliability and high-availability network to interconnect the data chain elements, a modular data compression system which can process the very high instrument data rates foreseen for future EO missions, a high performance very versatile payload processing unit that can be programmed on the fly, in 40us; a high-rate RF downlink transmitter is used for high speed data transmission from earth observation or data relay satellites to the ground and an optical terminal system that supports high speed data links and optical downlinks.
Whilst these individual advances represent significant improvements to current satellite payload technologies, Hi-SIDEs main innovation is the delivery of a complete data chain architecture to handle an aggregate instrument data-rate of at least 50 Gbps in the near term, together with a roadmap to achieve even higher performance in the future.
-SIDE took a systematic approach to the development of the high-speed data chain. At the start of the project an assessment of the target user operational needs and business interests, was performed (WP1). The assessment concluded that the earth observation market was the most suitable candidate for the Hi-SIDE demonstration as a likely user of the technology in the future. Based on the outcomes of this assessment, architectural designs (WP2) for each HSDC component and the overall data chain were defined. These designs include detailed functional, performance and interface specifications for each of the elements that will be produced by Hi-SIDE and were used to develop a verification plan for the complete data chain. The project the architectures were converted into detailed designs for each of the elements (WP3). This step involved the preparation of detailed mechanical and thermal designs and the selection of the element components. The complete designs were then applied in the manufacturing of the HSDC elements (WP4). Once manufactured the complete elements were verified against the pre-defined specifications (WP5) and on the 16th of June 2022 the partners came together to integrate and demonstrate the end-to end integrated data chain (WP6).
The main outcomes and achievements of this work project are 11 new and 2 enhanced satellite products:
• Network
• Interfaces
• An HPDP processing element that can reach a theoretical maximum of 10GOPS per second. The element can be further expanded using multiple boards in series and reach a multiple figure.
• A data compression unit implementing advanced and efficient on-board data compression and other adaptive data reduction techniques with a processing data-rate of 5 Gbit/s at the input, compression algorithm CCSDS 123.1-B and image compression.
• A RF Downlink operating at 26 GHz supporting advanced encoding and modulation schemes and downlink data rate of 10 Gbit/s (with two channels using dual polarization antenna each operating at 5 Gbit/s).
• A Ka band power amplifier designed for 25.5-27 GHz using Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductors. This design provides a downlink signal with 2W of RF power.
• A V12 demodulator offering full bandwidth exploitation in Ka-band by a symbol rate up to 2 x 1200 Ms/s, for an aggregate bitrate of greater than 10 Gbit/s.
• A multigigabit optical downlink for data being transported over the SpaceFibre network and processed by the on-board equipment. It features a maximum user throughput of 7.6 Gbit/s for the SpaceFibre interface whereas the data processing chain achieves 8.9 Gbit/s throughput for an achieved downlink at 10 Gbit/s.
• A Gold Reference Software implementation of CCSDS-123.0-B-2 suitable for cross-verification for software implementations.
• A state-of-the-art Hyperspectral Image Compressor based on a parallel implementation of CCSDS 123.0-B-2 with the new Hybrid Encoder
The main outcomes and achievements of this work project are 11 new and 2 enhanced satellite products:
• Network
• Interfaces
• An HPDP processing element that can reach a theoretical maximum of 10GOPS per second. The element can be further expanded using multiple boards in series and reach a multiple figure.
• A data compression unit implementing advanced and efficient on-board data compression and other adaptive data reduction techniques with a processing data-rate of 5 Gbit/s at the input, compression algorithm CCSDS 123.1-B and image compression.
• A RF Downlink operating at 26 GHz supporting advanced encoding and modulation schemes and downlink data rate of 10 Gbit/s (with two channels using dual polarization antenna each operating at 5 Gbit/s).
• A Ka band power amplifier designed for 25.5-27 GHz using Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductors. This design provides a downlink signal with 2W of RF power.
• A V12 demodulator offering full bandwidth exploitation in Ka-band by a symbol rate up to 2 x 1200 Ms/s, for an aggregate bitrate of greater than 10 Gbit/s.
• A multigigabit optical downlink for data being transported over the SpaceFibre network and processed by the on-board equipment. It features a maximum user throughput of 7.6 Gbit/s for the SpaceFibre interface whereas the data processing chain achieves 8.9 Gbit/s throughput for an achieved downlink at 10 Gbit/s.
• A Gold Reference Software implementation of CCSDS-123.0-B-2 suitable for cross-verification for software implementations.
• A state-of-the-art Hyperspectral Image Compressor based on a parallel implementation of CCSDS 123.0-B-2 with the new Hybrid Encoder
Hi-SIDE developed and demonstrated an integrated HSDC architecture. Each element was developed in line with end-user requirements and was be demonstrated all as a fully integrated and networked data chain. The project achieved beyond state of the art performance: 20 times faster data processing (compared to performance obtained on LEON4), 4 times higher storage capacity (64Tbit), 4 times faster data compression (compared to compression board of CORECI-2 unit), 8 times faster data transfer (compared to current Ka-Band downlink systems), 6 times faster link capacity to ground (compared to current RF downlink systems) and 50 times faster on board network with embedded QoS and FDIR (compared to current SpaceWire network technology).
The project delivered the following impacts:
• New high-speed data chain sub systems and supporting technologies for data intensive next generation Telecommunications and Earth observation systems.
• Translation of research results into flight products through exploitation of the project results
• Accelerating and broadening technology transfer through close collaboration between academic and commercial partners.
The project delivered the following impacts:
• New high-speed data chain sub systems and supporting technologies for data intensive next generation Telecommunications and Earth observation systems.
• Translation of research results into flight products through exploitation of the project results
• Accelerating and broadening technology transfer through close collaboration between academic and commercial partners.