Development of reliable FPGA-based Systems for Space Mission Applications: Intelligent Instrument Control, Image Processing and Data Analysis

Increased processing capabilities are required for autonomous instrument operation and payload data processing tasks on-board spacecraft. SRAM-based Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) offer the capability of being reconfigured, which is a valuable feature allowing remote upgrades and repairs in space missions. Such systems are also well suited to hardware acceleration of high-performance tasks due to their flexibility, parallel architecture and embedded digital signal processing (DSP) blocks (i.e. compared to single board computers and DSP processors).

Modern approaches necessitate that data is processed in real time while being streamed from a data source to a data sink, e.g. from a payload instrument to a mass memory device. On-board stream processing involves the execution of computationally intensive DSP tasks by multiple processor units, as well as reduction of the data volume, which is stored on-board and later transmitted to Earth.
The student will work closely with research groups in both the Department of Engineering and the Department of Physics & Astronomy which have experience in the use of FPGA systems for instrument control and data processing / compression. The project will benefit from the outcome of a previous very successful project sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Airbus Defence and Space, in which a new Fault Detection Isolation and Recovery (FDIR) methodology was developed for space-borne SRAM FPGA-based systems aimed at payload data processing.

This new project will be concerned with novel stream processing and analytics solutions to handle large data volumes and detect anomalies in data on the fly. The focus will be on the design, acceleration and testing of data processing and control algorithms for an FPGA based analytical instrument, which has been developed for space applications.

The project will be carried out in close collaboration with industrial partners in the space hardware sector that have significant heritage in this area. Instrument and processor requirements will be studied in detail in the early phases of the project. Scientific applications (instruments) will be selected for study/testing in order to fully investigate the capability of the system. A prototype instrument system (TRL 4-5) designed and manufactured in a parallel research activity will be used to verify the performance of the algorithms and to test the overall functionality of the system.

There will also be an opportunity to work on terrestrial applications for such a system (through active collaborations with partners in the nuclear and mining industries). The work will involve development of code for FPGA applications, the use of processor systems for space applications and scientific data processing.

Please note the project is jointly supervised by Prof Vladimirova and Dr Hutchinson.