Development of Flexible Avionics Architecture Based on Autonomous Decentralized System For Space Transportation Systems

摘要

In many space development programs, Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) concepts are focused on, to improve the reliability and to reduce the operational cost for launching various artificial satellites and other payloads. Since a RLV may operate over hundred launches, the probability of vehicle loss must be one out of hundreds or less. The extraordinary improvements of reliability and maintainability are required. Especially, the avionics systems of RLV, the brains of the vehicle, are expected to have fault tolerance toward the faults of avionics system, and flexibility with the various situations and the modifications of system configurations, in addition to control and management of the whole vehicle. Hence, the new avionics architecture based on the Data Field (DF) architecture, a major data communication technique of Autonomous Decentralized System (ADS), was proposed to satisfy these heterogeneous requirements. To evaluate this architecture, development of prototype system software, which plays a key role in this concept, and evaluation tests were was conducted.rnIn this paper, the requirements for RLV and the concept of the new architecture are summarized. And the results of the prototype test for verifying the function and performance of the new architecture, is presented.