Next generation space avionics: layered system implementation

Advances in electronics over the past decade have produced major improvements in the power and flexibility of computer systems. Unfortunately current avionics systems for space applications typically have not leveraged these COTS advantages. A decade ago, the state-of-the-art for avionics systems made a step change to the Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) used in the Boeing 777. This next generation avionics architecture is not based upon traditional Byzantine redundancy structures, but on a truth-based scheme where each element knows when an internal failure occurs and removes itself from the system. IMA utilizes a lock-step microprocessor design that communicates to a COTS Backplane for input/output, and to a Virtual Backplane/spl trade/ (a reliable high-speed serial bus) for intra-system communication. The system functions are implemented using a time and space partitioned operating system. The entire system provides the simplicity of a simplex system, implements the highest level of reliability providing complete flexibility to reconfigure both software applications and hardware interfaces, allows for rapid prototyping using low-cost COTS hardware, and is easily expandable beyond the initial point implementation. As the only 5/sup th/ generation avionics architecture, the concepts incorporated into Honeywell's IMA are ideally suited to be the backbone of the next generation Space Exploration Program avionics architectures.     

Next generation test support systems for the aircraft life cycle

The objective of this paper is to present the experience of EADS in using a common test support system for integration and qualification testing, aircraft ground equipment (AGE), in-service software maintenance facilities (ISMF) and ground crew training. EADS uses its test support system AIDASS (Advanced Integrated Data Acquisition and Stimulation System) in different phases of the aircraft life cycle. AIDASS is comprised of a real-time front-end system and a standard PC for the user interface. The EADS test support system is used in almost all phases of the aircraft life cycle, for instance, for integration and verification testing, as aircraft ground equipment, for in-service software maintenance and training of ground crews. This test support system is used for the software maintenance in the TORNADO program at different airforces in Europe. The airforces also share test setups with industry     

Next generation digital GPS receiver

The architecture and technology features of the next-generation (NGR) digital GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver manufactured by Collin are described. The project's objective was to develop an advanced GPS receiver chipset with high antijam capabilities. The program, initiated in 1985, has provided the technology for miniature receiver products for both unmanned and manned vehicle applications. A two-channel version of the receiver is in full-scale development for tactical missile applications. A five-channel version is being tested and evaluated as a drop-in replacement for RCVR-3A, the US Department of Defense standard high dynamic receiver. The NGR design started with the digital signal processing architecture developed for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) hand-held GPS receiver. Enhancements were made to improve the antijam and signal acquisition performance. Producible, qualifiable and cost-effective silicon monolithic microwave integrated circuits and semicustom digital technologies were used to develop the core GPS chipset. A system design approach was established to permit reuse of mature and validated GPS software     

Next generation GOES satellite power subsystem

Hughes space and communications was awarded a contract in January 1998 from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for the design, manufacture, integration and launch of two next generation geostationary operational environmental satellites (GOES) and options for two additional satellites. The satellites measure weather phenomena as the primary mission and X-rays and charged particles as the secondary missions. This paper describes the GOES electrical power subsystem (EPS) requirements, architecture, hardware and energy balance analysis. As of this writing, the design of the EPS has completed the critical design review phase and the hardware has entered the manufacturing phase     

Satellite-based navigation systems

The services which could make use of with such a system are air, land and sea navigation and position determination for geographers, cartographers, surveyors etc. on both land and at sea.     

Next generation functional test program development system

While superior-quality functional board test has been a goal for most high reliability electronics manufacturers, the time and effort for generating such test programs using today's tools and processes makes this difficult to achieve in a cost effective manner. This paper will introduce a revolutionary approach to functional board test program development that combines the comprehensiveness of software-based simulation with the speed and simplicity of hardware emulation. The result is a functional Test Program Set development system that can produce high fault coverage, diagnostic test programs in a fraction of the time it takes using traditional techniques, and at a lower unit cost. In this paper we will first provide a brief background on the strengths and weaknesses of current software and hardware TPS development techniques-simulation hot mock-up. Next, the new approach is described in detail and contrasted against the existing techniques. Finally, actual experience to date using a prototyped system is presented     

Unmanned space vehicle navigation by GPS

In this paper, flight-path deviation in the navigation of unmanned space vehicles by global positioning system (GPS) is analyzed. A new method to calculate flight-path deviation by means of coordinate transforming is presented and the software of navigation and control is designed. This software is practical and effective for navigation by GPS with some characteristics including high-speed, high accuracy, real-time positioning and the use of digital mapping technique     

The Parker effect and navigation in space

The two well known rules of physics are: “The laws of interaction between solid bodies”, or Newton's Laws; and Maxwell's laws discovered in the 19th century on the laws of electromagnetic radiation, particularly its constant speed of propagation, “c”, in a vacuum. The Parker effect describes the correlation between these two rules and is at the heart of a new navigational technology called NIRPS. The Navigational Independent Relative Positioning System (NIRPS) uses the relation between an inertial medium (its own body) and a non-inertial medium (light) to provide information on the velocity (speed and direction) with which it is travelling in three-dimensional space. When the system is set in motion, the contrasts in the properties of the media result in an apparent deflection of the light. At the core of NIRPS is an a opto-electronic device called a “velometer”. The velometer measures the magnitude and angle of the Parker effect, which directly represent the speed and direction, or velocity, of the system in space. Finally, from these results we can then interpret the present position of the system relative to its previous position     

State interpolation for on-board navigation systems

Common concepts for autonomous on-board navigation systems rely on the numerical integration of a spacecraft trajectory between subsequent measurements of a navigation sensor such as GPS. In combination with a Kalman filter, a predicted state vector becomes available at discrete, but not necessarily equidistant time steps. When used for real-time attitude control or geo-coding of image data, the on-board navigation system has to provide continuous dense output at equidistant time steps, which usually conflicts with the natural stepsize of the relevant integration methods and the non-equidistant measurement times. To cope with this problem, the integrator has to be supplemented by an interpolation scheme of compatible order and accuracy.After presenting a representative formulation of an on-board navigation system and deriving related timing and accuracy requirements, suitable Runge–Kutta methods and associated interpolants are selected and evaluated. Promising results are obtained for the classical RK4 method in combination with Richardson extrapolation and 5th-order Hermite interpolation. The 5th-order Fehlberg method with interpolation due to Enright and, for drag-free scenarios, the 5th-order Runge–Kutta–Nystrom method with 5th-order Hermite interpolation provide a good performance in terms of position interpolation. However, as both methods exhibit significant errors for the velocity interpolation, they are not recommended for use with the outlined navigation filter.     

Quality control in integrated navigation systems

Real-time estimation of parameter sin dynamic systems, which becomes increasingly important in the field of high-precision navigation, requires real-time testing of the models underlying the navigation system. A real-time recursive testing procedure than can be used in conjunction with the Kalman filter algorithm is presented, along with diagnostic tools for inferring the detectability of particular model errors. The testing procedure consists of detection, identification, and adaptation. It can accommodate model errors in the measurement model and dynamic model of the integrated navigation system and is optimal in the uniformly-most-powerful-invariant sense     

Electric space propulsion systems

Active development of electric thrustors began 10 years ago. Today, several kinds of thrustors have achieved efficiencies above 90 % and lifetimes of several thousand hours. The following article derives the basic theory of electric thrust production at constant exhaust velocity, and at variable exhaust velocity programmed for optimum vehicle performance. Electrothermal or arcjet; electrostatic or ion; and electrodynamic or plasma thrustors are described. At the present time, ion thrustors of the electron bombardment and of the surface ionization types are the most promising systems. Electric power in space may be generated by solar cells or nuclear-electric generators. It is expected that the incore thermionic converter will eventually be the preferred system. A variety of missions with electric propulsion systems appear feasible and highly desirable, among them orbital station keeping, attitude control, planetary probes, solar and out-of-the-ecliptic probes, deep-space probes, and manned Mars and Venus exploration. For each mission, a careful systems-design study must be made, which will provide the optimum selection of thrustor type, thrust level, exhaust velocity, thrust program, power source, trajectory, and flight plan.     

空间多机器人协同的多视线仅测角相对导航

研究了空间多机器人对非合作目标的多视线协同仅测角相对导航问题。为利用多视线信息融合提升仅测角相对导航性能,给出了一种可观测度优化的多视线仅测角相对导航方法。首先基于二阶CW方程构建了中心机器人与目标相对动力学模型和状态方程,并构建了仅包含多伴飞机器人视线角的观测方程,结合扩展卡尔曼滤波算法,形成多视线仅测角相对导航系统;然后分析推导得到可观度最优的视线间夹角条件,提出了兼顾可观测度和长期自然维持的多伴飞机器人观测构型优化方法;最后,数学仿真结果表明,提出的多视线仅测角相对导航系统、可观测度最优的视线夹角条件和观测构型优化方法,可以显著提高距离状态可观测度和估计性能,且具有较好的工程可用性。     

Autonomous GPS/INS navigation experiment for space transfer vehicle

An experiment is described to validate the concept of developing an autonomous integrated spacecraft navigation system using onboard Global Positioning System (GPS) and inertial navigation system (INS) measurements. Previous work by the authors (1988, 1990) has demonstrated the feasibility of integrating GPS measurements with INS measurements to provide a total improvement in spacecraft navigation performance, i.e., improvement in position, velocity and attitude information. An important aspect of this research is the automatic real-time reconfiguration capability of the system, which is designed to respond to changes in a spacecraft mission under the control of an expert system     

临近空间无人飞行器多余度容错导航系统设计

临近空间无人飞行器导航系统的故障直接影响到飞行器的任务执行和飞行安全,因此必须能够长时间地保持稳定性和精确性,为达到此目的必须设计由惯性导航、卫星导航等多种导航传感器组成的多源多余度容错导航系统,提高系统的可靠性。针对临近空间飞行器制导控制对导航信息的需求,提出了一种标准的三余度导航系统架构,并设计了采用新型加权平均表决子算法,具备故障检测和隔离以及故障重构功能的容错重构算法,构建了适用于临近空间无人飞行器的多余度容错导航系统,通过实测试验数据仿真验证了容错导航系统的性能,展示了系统一次故障工作的故障容错能力。所研究内容也可被其他类型的无人飞行器借鉴和参考。     

European strategic dependence as related to space technology: navigation

In 1998, EUROSPACE, the Association of the European Space Industry, has conducted a study, the purpose of which was to analyse strategic dependence in the context of space technology. Among the space vulnerability domains, Navigation appears as a quite essential one. The present article reproduces the chapter of the EUROSPACE study related to Satellite navigation and positioning technology.     

GPS modeling for designing aerospace vehicle navigation systems

The complexity of the design of a Global Positioning System (GPS) user segment, as well as the performance demanded of the components, depends on user requirements such as total navigation accuracy. Other factors, for instance the expected satellite/vehicle geometry or the accuracy of an accompanying inertial navigation system can also affect the user segment design. Models of GPS measurements are used to predict user segment performance at various levels. Design curves are developed which illustrate the relationship between user requirements, the user segment design, and component performance     

INMARSAT integrity channels for global navigation satellite systems

The transmission of integrity information using a signal format compatible with the Global Positioning System (GPS) and relayed through a geostationary satellite repeater, which will be critical in achieving high integrity and availability of global navigation by satellite is discussed. The inclusion of navigation repeaters designed to fulfil this function, the next generation of INMARSAT spacecraft, INMARSAT-3 is examined. The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) integrity channel (GIC) will employ pseudorandom codes in the same family as, but distinct from, the codes reserved by GPS. The data format of the basic integrity channel is designed to convey user range error information for 24 to 40 satellites. A closed-loop timing compensation technique will be used at the uplinking Earth station, to make the signal's clock and carrier Doppler variations identical to those that would result from an onboard signal source. Therefore, the INMARSAT-3 satellites will increase the number of useful navigation satellites available to any user, and can also function as sources of precise timing. There is also a possibility that wide area differential corrections can be carried on the same signal     

临近空间高超声速飞行器天文导航系统综述

临近空间是航天与航空业务领域的结合部,具有重要的战略价值。高超声速飞行器是临近空间力量部署的重要载体,已逐渐进入应用部署阶段。临近空间高超声速飞行器的飞行环境和任务条件对导航系统提出了新的更高要求。在总结临近空间高超声速飞行器的导航技术研究进展的基础上,对天文导航技术的应用环境和条件进行了系统的分析和探讨,提出了5个重点研究方向,包括：星图采集效能、光学误差模型、视场观测机理、姿态更新速率、小型化模块化工程化等。研究结果可为临近空间高超声速飞行器天文导航系统的设计提供参考。     

面向高轨空间的北斗导航性能增强星座选型研究

由于高轨空间超出北斗卫星导航系统的正常服务区域,导航信号微弱、可见性差,难以实现高轨飞行器全程稳定可靠的导航定位服务。提出了以空间卫星为时空基准传递平台,向高轨空间区域发射导航信号,从而提高高轨飞行器导航性能的方法,并展开面向高轨空间的北斗导航性能增强星座选型研究。基于卫星可见性、精度衰减因子（DOP）、信号接收门限和所需增强卫星数目等评估指标,仿真分析了基于LEO星座、MEO星座和HEO星座的北斗导航增强性能。