The widespread use of COTS in LEO is constrained by their susceptibility to faults and the difficulty in implementing custom fault detection and recovery actions (FDIR) closely to the system in question. Thus, faults may pass undetected until they propagate outside the COTS system and cause a significant impact on the spacecraft. This delay in recovery actions may contribute to lower in-orbit reliability and availability. The challenge is in supporting designers who wish to protect their systems via recurrent methods and tools which are also cost-effective.
EVOLEO proposes to develop and demonstrate an elegant breadboard of a reference design for a "Minimalistic Supervisor", including HW and a set of SW/FW tools to easily configure/parametrize the operation of the inputs/outputs and internal functions without the need for specific coding.
The HW is based on Microchip rad-tolerant MCU, for example, the ATMegaS family or SAM3X8ERT. The key functions will include monitoring, FDIR actions and support to reconfiguration of the supervised system. The interfaces include analog and digital lines as well as serial-based communications (RS422 or CAN).
The reference design will respond to a variety of use-cases through a graphical user interface that allows a user with minimal experience to easily configure and parametrize the reference design. The ultimate goal of the implementation of the SCORPYOS concept is to significantly increase the availability of the system under supervision, either as a single or a supporting unit. Furthermore, it greatly simplifies the implementation of monitoring and critical control functions on COTS-based systems, improving their adoption and reducing overall costs.
The proposed 12-month activity will implement the elegant breadboard, associated HW/SW tools and validate this concept against at least two relevant use-cases. The results at the end of the activity can be taken to support a qualification process for an in-orbit demonstration.
