Intra-Spacecraft Wireless Sensor/Actuators Network

Rouzbeh Amini

Promoter: Prof. Eberhard Gill (LR) Daily supervisor: Georgi Gaydadjiev (EWI) Feb. 11, 2009
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Aerospace Engineering Faculty Space Systems Engineering Computer Engineering Laboratory

Contents
1. Project Objectives 2. Wireless on-board communication 3. Power management a. Simulation environment b. Attitude determination c. Power management 4. Conclusion

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Project objectives
i. Determining useful COTS wireless standards for onboard communication Evaluating WiFi, Zigbee and Bluetooth as three potential
candidates (COTS standards)

ii. Design a system level power managemer for a set of Attitude Determination and Control System sensors and actuators onboard spacecraft and evaluate the energy efficiency of the system and functionality for a given operation scenario.

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Part I

Wireless on-board

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Motivation
Wired CDHS designs [1]: Wires/connectors failure Costly late design change Development time overhead Undesired ground loops EMC and crosstalk Test/integration difficulties Final installation of Spacecraft harness at Lockheed Martin Limited design flexibility Mass overhead of cables/wires (6-10 %)
[1] Amini, R., et al.., "New generations of spacecraft data handling systems: Less Harness , More Reliability", In the Proceedings of IAC06, 2006 5

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Wireless on-board
Possibilities: 1. Developing a new standard 2. COTS standards, e.g., WiFi, Zigbee and Bluetooth In both cases the following issues should be evaluated for each subsystem: Communication bandwidth Computational overhead Data integrity and fault tolerance Volume, mass and power usage overhead Power management and autonomy
1- Practically, not every subsystem can enjoy a wireless communication link 2- Power management plays a great role in increasing autonomy
Fly-by-wireless plane (AIVA) developed in Portugal (2m Long 4m Wingspan 25kg)

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Wireless Standard selection

Onboard data traffic can be categorized to: 1. Payload data 2. House-keeping data 3. ADCS data
The different data traffic types impose various requirements on the data handling system: 1. Data rate 2. Data robustness 3. Fault tolerance 4. Reconfigurability

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Comparison of standards

WiFi is more suitable for long range and high data rate communication

Bluetooth and ZigBee are low power and low data rate standards
ZigBee is more flexible and configurable Bluetooth supports a higher data rate and consumes more power [2]

[2] Amini, R., Gaydadjiev, G, Gill, E., "The Challenges of Intra-Spacecraft Wireless Data Interfacing", In the Proceedings of IAC07, India 2007

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Onboard Wireless Sensors/Actuators Network (OWSAN)

Onboard Wireless Network shows different characteristics comparing to Wireless Sensor Network and Wireless Adhoc Network.

Number of nodes Deployment Failure Communication Topology Power ID Data correlation

Wireless Sensor Network Wireless Ad-hoc Network OWSAN >100 (1000s) 10-100 <10 Densely Relatively Sparsely Closely Prone to Failure Not Prone to Failure Not prone to Failure broadcast Point-to-Point Point-to-Point Very frequent Almost steady Steady Limited Rechargable Rechargable but Limited Local ID Global ID Local ID Low-Medium correl. No - low correlation High correlation

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Part II

Power Management

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Power Management
Goal to achieve: Maximizing power usage efficiency of Attitude Determination System (ADS) of a microsatellite in a realistic scenario
Three scenarios are designed: 1- Pointing mode: the spacecraft points to a certain location on Earth for a short period of time. High accuracy requirements (< 1deg) 2- Tracking mode: the spacecraft tracks the ground station. The accuracy demand is lower than the pointing mode. Medium accuracy requirements (< 3deg) 3- Spacecraft stabilization: the spacecraft is only stabilized to perform the science mission. Low accuracy requirements(< 10deg)

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 ADS accuracy defines: Type of employed sensors energy consumption Sampling frequency data rate energy consumption Onboard computation load energy consumption Following sensors are selected: 3-axis magnetometer 3-axis Gyroscope 6 sunsensors

Simulation Environment Matlab/Simulink - Environment simulation - Spacecraft simulation - Attitude determination tools - Power manager

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Simulation environment
Case study: BIRD satellite Dimension: 620x550x620mm Weight: 92kg

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 Following models are build and tested: Orbit propagator (SGP4) Ephemeris (Sun, Earth, Eclipse) Magnetic field model (IGRF) Spacecraft dynamics and kinematics External disturbances (radiation and gravity) Deterministic determination algorithms Kalman filter determination algorithms

Determination is quaternion based

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Power management
i.

Possible power management schemes:

Simple and decentralized approach: Sensor node may turn off its transmitter after transmitting a message and go to idle mode. Sensor goes to idle mode when not enough power is available

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ii.

Dynamic centralized approach Changes the sensing accuracy to reduce data rate Changes the duration of the idle/on/off time Uses an algorithm to estimate the sensor's data Decides which set of sensors should be used to use the least power to achieve the acceptable accuracy

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iii. Dynamic de-centralized: Similar to centralized approach but the decision making is put on the sensors side. Sensors should communicate and find the best solution Neural network decision making (Training and learning) Fuzzy logic decision making Seems to be suitable for space apps due to calm and predictable nature of space and ADS in our case. Etc.

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Conclusion
Examining more Eclipse scenarios to improve the ADS and tune it Examining different scenarios of absence of sensor measurements Examining Unscented filters for ADS Designing predictive power management schemes to maintain the performance

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