CCSDS SOISWireless Working Group

ESA Presentation of past, current and foreseen activities

Meeting on April 20-24, 2009Colorado Springs, USA

• Optical Wireless Links for intra-S/C communications (INTA, Completed 2001)

No EMC Issues

Past wireless studies at the ESA

• Optical Wireless Links Demonstrator (INTA, Completed 2004)

Past wireless studies at the ESA

• CDF “WiFly – Fly-by-Wireless Spacecraft Avionics Bus” (2006)

Past wireless studies at the ESA

• Optical Wireless CAN Bus Onboard Foton-M3 capsule (INTA, launched 2007)

Past wireless studies at the ESA

• RF Wireless/Optical Intra-spacecraft Demonstrator for Intra-Spacecraft communications– Oerlikon (CH), completed in 2007

Past wireless studies at the ESA

• Wireless Sensor Motes for Onboard S/C Networking and Inter-satellite Formation Flying communications (SSTL, Completed 2007)

Past wireless studies at the ESA

• Optical Wireless intra-spacecraft communications (INTA, ongoing, to complete in 2008)– Optical, Powering techniques, trade-offs, TRL5-demonstrator– Study of spaceborne applications of optical wireless comms

Past wireless studies at the ESA

• Assessment and demonstrator (Venus Express) for Wireless Sensor Networks (SEA, ongoing, to complete in 2010)– 802.15.4, TinyOS vs Zigbee, Power mgnt…

• WSN evaluation for Launchers (SEA-Astrium, ongoing, to complete in 2010)

Current wireless studies at ESA

RF Wireless for Intra-spacecraft

• Implementation of a SpaceWire-to-802.11n bridge (SEA-4Links, ongoing, to complete in 2010)

• Implementation of a CAN-to-Bluetooth bridge (SEA-SSC, ongoing, to complete in 2010)

Current wireless studies at ESA

Current wireless studies at ESA

Wireless Sensor Networks for Planetary Exploration (to complete in 2010)– Assessment of scenarios using WSN to support PEx missions; modeling and

breadboarding activities

Fractionated Satellites (to complete in 2009)– Discovery study with the following objectives:

• Define system architectures, comparative assessments and TRL of enabling technologies; determination of the added value of fractionation

Current wireless studies at ESA

• Ultra wide band (UWB) communication– For sensor communications (typically: pulse,1.5Mbps, 500MHz bdw…)– Interesting characteristics:

• Communication under the noise level: EMC concerns greatly reduced• Power consumption extremely low (lower than actual technologies)

• RFID study and demonstrations– For ATV Cargo applications– Is to follow MB recommendations…

• Satellite wireless access point on launcher for monitoring of the passenger– Objective is to define, design, manufacture and test a breadboard of a Satellite

Wireless Access point on launchers for monitoring of the passenger satellite (http://telecom.esa.int)

• Heat Shield wireless instrumentation proof-of-concept– Internal laboratory activity

Future studies which ESA intends to pursue