Smart and Scalable Satellite High-Speed Processing chain

Project Information

S4Pro

Grant agreement ID: 822014

DOI

10.3030/822014

Project closed

EC signature date 24 October 2018

Start date 1 November 2018

End date 31 March 2022

Funded under

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

Total cost

€ 2 654 391,25

EU contribution

€ 2 654 391,25

Coordinated by

INNOVATIONSGESELLSCHAFT TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAT BRAUNSCHWEIG MBH
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - S4Pro (Smart and Scalable Satellite High-Speed Processing chain)

Reporting period: 2020-05-01 to 2022-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

In a constantly evolving satellite sector, where downlink constraints and mission productivity requirements are growing S4Pro designed and implemented enabling technology for on-board high-end data products through a power efficient high performance space processing chain with focus on LEO Earth observation and satellite communication & navigation systems. S4Pro results support data-intensive future missions, thus endowing the EU industry and society with:
- Capacity to perform massive data transmission at low power
- Access to miniaturised hardware modules
- Performance advance of On-Board Computers
- Enhanced data access to on–board mass storage
- Demonstrated real-time Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data filtering, decimation and compression
- On-board processing technology for data reduction
- SW with improved time-to market
- Accelerated SW routines
Within S4Pro, HW elements of an on-board processing chain including a payload processing unit, a mass memory unit, an X-band SDR module, and an S-Band TT&C communication module were designed, manufactured, integrated, and validated up to TRL5. Similarly, management SW and optimised application SW for Staggered SAR as well as for optical ship detection were developed and validated. The full processing chain has not be validated as a system within the timeframe of the project.

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

Objectives:
# 1-Massive data transmission at low power
S4Pro has developed an X-Band Software Defined Radio (SDR). The SDR is based on a new, high-performance FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) with the ability to downlink at 1Gbit/s under low power consumption.
# 2-Miniaturisation of HW modules within the processing chain
S4Pro HW is based on the cPCI (compact Peripheral Component Interface) for space standard interface to create compact modules (mass storage, Payload Processing Unit (PPU), command and control unit (C&CU)) for integration in even nano-satellites.
# 3-Increase performance of HW processors / HW acceleration
Through the use of COTS (Commercial-off-the-shelf) components for non-critical mission tasks S4Pro relies on technology with a leap of almost a decade to space-qualified processing technology. Center piece of the PPU is a Xilinx Ultrascale+ which contains ARM A53 application processors besides an abundant amount of high-speed IO interfaces in order to satisfy even the highest mission requirements. S4Pro developed firmware and SW for the PPU as well as the PCB.
# 4-Enhance data access to on–board mass storage
S4Pro completed the specification and architecture design, along with the HW schematics and Printed Circuit Board (PCB) layout of the next generation Mass Memory Unit (MMU). The MMU will be able to sustain data rates of at least 6 Gbps, using a cPCI-SS PCIe interface to both receive data from the PPU and transmit data to the X-Band SDR.
# 5-Demonstrate near real-time, sensor-specific, joint on-board SAR data filtering, decimation and compression
S4Pro has derived the data transfer and computational requirements of the staggered SAR azimuth filter for ROSE-L, Tandem-L, and Sentinel-1-NG sensor concepts. The algorithm was restructured and implemented as a prototype (Python), ported to C, and further optimized. The requirements for ROSE-L were found to be compliant with the anticipated single-board PPU performance.
# 6-Reduce the amount of data to be transferred
The team developed, and optimized applications designed to process raw payload data and to transfer their elaborated results to ground. Regarding Optical applications S4Pro developed algorithms for on-board ship detection and vegetation monitoring.
# 7-Design of management SW to improve time-to market through re-usability of standardized processing chain elements
S4Pro has harmonized requirements and initial specifications for the design of reusable management software, and performed implementation and validation.
# 8-Improving performance of application SW through creation of self-optimising libraries
S4Pro has developed optimised SW routines and validated them. Performance benchmarks lead to the estimate that the optimized SW libraries will enable processing for the selected applications possibly even on single processor units (containing the ARM A53 based Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+).
Exploitation of S4Pro results will be achieved through a permanent collective effort throughout the project and beyond. The respective business departments of the S4Pro partners have been involved and contributed to the exploitation plan with specific information regarding their business strategy, the market analysis and the exploitation of S4Pro results.

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)

SAR: Future High-Resolution Wide-Swath (HRWS) SAR missions need on-board processing to reduce the data downlink. In S4Pro, the staggered SAR azimuth filter was selected to demonstrate real-time performance for ROSE-L and to increase its TRL.
Optical: S4Pro has developed processor-independent SW, as well as an OBC. This will have an important impact on scalability and reconfigurability of the applications for a variety of platforms, resulting in economic efficiency.
Navigation & Communication: The on-board use of GPS receivers and S-Band TT&C communication modules, as separate HW and SW entities, is state of art. S4Pro target was to deploy a multi-GNSS (GPS/Galileo) receiver for the PVT determination (position, velocity and time), using snapshot positioning. S-Band Communication was integrated tightly with navigation results from the EO satellites, to generate high-priority and low-rate telemetry messages. At project end, a single HW board with multi-GNSS navigation, and S-Band telemetry was brought from TRL 3 to at least TRL 5.
Payload processing: Besides a large effort in software optimization S4Pro performed the design of a cPCI payload processing unit that includes a Zynq Ultrascale+ Processor allowing for I/O bandwidth beyond 16Gbit/s.
HW miniaturization: The MMU HW design was miniaturized to a single cPCI 6U board passing the current state of the art by using new components and devices to meet high data rate and high capacity storage in a space system.
Socio-economic impact:
The competitiveness of the European space industry is based on its ability to provide spacecraft that meet the needs of the customer and other stakeholders at the lowest cost and at a reduced production lead time. Tomorrow’s spacecraft needs to be a cube-, nano- or small satellite with highly performant processors, capable to treat and compress data on-board and efficiently transmit it to ground at high data rates. S4Pro has developed modules and systems with view to create alternatives to non-European ones, including SW and HW, with view to penetrate international market with performance and monetary-wise competitive products.
To transfer research results to industry and break the “not-invented-here” barrier, S4Pro will focus on existing technologies with proven industrial relevance. In summary, S4Pro contributes to bring closer to market the major links of the tomorrow’s high-speed processing chain, directly improving European current and future competitive advantage on the cube-, nano- and small satellites market.
Through the demonstration of the possibilities of high-performance payload-processing systems through the system design and implementation of heterogeneous space-qualifiable processors S4Pro will not only innovate the on-board processing units, but create a synergy between commercial and space SW developers.

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