Onboard data handling

Our Onboard Data Handling (OBDH) group is the leading research group in spacecraft data systems.

Overview

Our group, led by Dr Chris Bridges, has been delivering cutting-edge hardware and software computing technologies to industry and government missions.

The group develops new concepts and technologies across many application areas where hard real-time requirements and big data are meeting to create new and immediate problems.

Research lead

If you'd like to learn more about what we do then please get in touch.

Dr Christopher Bridges

Reader in On-Board Data Handling (OBDH)

Single satellite on-board data handling upgrades

Single satellites are controlled in many 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 on-board computer (OBC) hardware and software solutions for small satellite missions and applications towards high throughput/bandwidth processing capabilities at lower power and cost.

Multi-satellite systems research

Screenshot of Earth from Google Earth showing all the satellites

Multi-satellite systems and missions can offer unique services where timely and spatially different data can enable new applications. These include utilising close-proximity operations, formation flying, megaconstellations, or clusters of loosely coupled satellites.

This research stream aims to provide new and novel solutions to support hard and soft real time operations.

Nanosatellite demonstrators

Our group has been working towards new computing and software payloads and experiments for the low cost and resource constrained CubeSat standard and platform for research, but also for teaching and supporting other missions.

Leveraging from existing terrestrial technologies, the group explores how the space environment affects microelectronics such as smartphone processors and parallelised image processors through ground testing.