A COTS Flexible Payload Control System for Flexible Payloads and High-Throughput Satellites

摘要

The increasing complexity of the communications satellite payloads, in particular those onboard the already popular High-Throughput Satellites (HTS), as well as those based on the innovative flexible payload architectures which may support configurable bandwidth, EIRP and/or configurable coverage has challenged how the payload engineers and the sales engineers, who are both constantly in charge of maximizing the revenue per Hz, address the management and optimization of the payload resources. Moreover these payloads involve a significant increase in the satellite operations team' daily workload thereby demanding a new approach to streamline and automate all the payload reconfiguration process. This paper details GMV's Payload Control System (PCS) solution to the problem fully based on our experience deploying this kind of systems, which in turn builds on our previous experience developing products and solutions for communications payload management and operations. GMV's PCS (smart PCS) is a framework rather than a closed solution that can readily be adapted to each specific payload architecture. It provides tools, algorithms and optimization methods to support a wide set of features: payload path reconfiguration, onboard amplifiers gain configuration, steerable beam pointing and trimming operations, antenna related limits computation, configuration of flexible payload devices, real-time monitoring and displaying of payload telemetry, DC power consumption analysis, and thermal analysis. The PCS applies complex computations such as the determination of the resulting physical movements of the antenna pointing mechanisms, footprint processing and calculation of all feasible channel path reconfiguration solutions, among other relevant features. It supports interaction between third-party payload engineer's tools, such as a Satellite Capacity Tool (SCT) and the satellite operations engineers' Satellite Control System (SCS). For that purpose, the PCS is fully integrated with both the SCT and the SCS systems.