LinkStar-X, An Integrated Flight Computer and S-/X-Band Software Defined Radio System For CubeSats and Small Satellites

摘要

LinkStar-X is a low power, secure X-Band software defined radio and flight computer for small satellites. The heart of the LinkStar-X system is the FRNCS flight computer, which utilizes the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC chip, a system that combines a quad core ARM-53 processor and Zynq UltraScale+ FPGA operating at up to 3450 DMIPS. FRNCS supports I2C, SPI and CAN; other data buses can be easily infused into the design. LinkStar-X integrates a software defined X-band radio for transmission and software defined S-Band radio to receive within the FPGA unit of FRNCS using the iVeia Velocity-SDR library. Note, the FRNCS flight computer can be used to define and manage other radios systems and other payloads and instruments. Research also included integration of the flight proven QuickSATA/ehicle Management System (VMS), an open source flight management system. QuickSATA/MS is flexible and tailored for cubesats and other types of small satellites, and provides communications control, power management, data and processor management, and integrated QuickSAT/Xen space hypervisor to provide secure virtual machines to prevent against malicious attacks and provide software based rad-hardening in addition to standard rad-hardening. The architecture provides for basic satellite command and control, data management, scheduling, event handling and a complete software based radio tool set. The framework allows for users to define custom classes of components (such as radios, magnetometers and other sensors) without modifying the core architecture. The architecture provides a robust data management framework, not only managing the vehicle configuration and schedule, but also logging system messages, errors and events, and storing data as needed into separate recording sessions. The baseline dimension of LinkStar-X is 55mm x 88 x 20, excluding the antennas and cables, allowing the powerful avionics and radio system to fit within a 1U cubesat. LinkStar-X is designed to work in LEO and deep space. This includes an operating temperature -40 to-+85°C, radiation hard to at least 40 krad TID, latch up immune to an LET of at least 80, and a device SEE rate of not greater than 0.01 event/day in Adams 90% worst case GEO environment. For the presentation we will discuss the research and design of the LinkStar-X architecture, how other systems can be integrated with LinkStar-X, and lab and near space test flight results.