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.
