Research Topics
The current research activities of the On Board Data Handling (OBDH) group can be divided in three key streams to support colleagues at SSC and SSTL.
Single Satellite OBDH Upgrades
Single satellites are controlled in many different ways; from radiation-hardened-by-design (RHBD) and custom field programmable gate array designs (FPGA) to implementing and 'ruggedising' modern commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies. This research stream aims to deliver new OBC hardware and software solutions for small satellite missions and applications towards high throughput/bandwidth processing capabilities at lower power and cost.
Distributed Satellite Systems (DSS)
Distributed satellite systems and missions can offer greater temporal and spatial resolution than single-satellite missions. Utilising close-proximity operations, constellations, or clusters of loosely coupled satellites, this research stream aims to provide new and novel solutions to hard and soft real time networked multi-node operations. These are particularly different than terrestrial networks and are analogous to highly mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) with intermittent connectivity.
CubeSat OBC Demonstrators
Since 2006, Dr Chris Bridges has been working towards new computing and software payloads and experiments for the low cost & resource constrained CubeSat standard and platform. Leveraging from existing terrestrial technologies, the group explores how the space environment affects microelectronics such as smart-phone processors & parallelised image processors through ground testing.
