Satellite Onboard Data Processing Architectures

Your assignment

Satellite onboard data processing architectures play a crucial role in the design and operation of space systems. The increasing demand for efficient and reliable data processing has led to the development of an onboard processing architecture evaluation system. There are processing benchmarks (e.g. the OBPMark from ESA) that provide a standardized framework for evaluating these architectures. Your assignment will be to support the ongoing research in this area by studying different reliable architectures using a benchmark. Specifically, you will investigate task scheduling approaches and multiprocessing using real-time operating systems (RTOS), on a RISC-V core for FPGAs. Other processing architecture options, depending on the type of processing, are FPGA data accelerators or architectures that come up during a literature review. As the applications are aimed for future usage in space, tolerance against radiation induced faults needs to be considered and investigated. The goal is to identify reliable advanced processing architectures for various types of satellite onboard data processing applications.

Result

The foreseen activities contain:

• A literature research on the topic of satellite onboard data processing architectures, radiation effects, fault mitigation implementations and other relevant topics.
• Defining a detailed research question and objective based on findings from the literature research.
• Familiarization with the evaluation system, RISC-V, RTOS and the benchmark.
• An analysis of the performance of different reliable architectures using the benchmark.
• If interested, support with the evaluation and testing space systems under radiation.

The internship will be a mixture of literature study, reporting, software engineering and practical work. The results are to be fine-tuned in discussion with you, where your interests, experiences and time will be taken into account.

Duration

The starting date will be the 1st of June 2025 or later. The duration is open for discussion, depending on your specific situation.

Vereisten

What is your profile?

• Field of study: Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics or similar.
• Masters student
• You have an interest in electronics, preferably experience as well.
• You have experience with FPGA and/or microcontroller programming.
• You enjoy taking initiative and are creative in solving problems.

What we offer

• A challenging internship project in a high-tech results oriented work environment at NLR in Amsterdam.
• Flexibility and experienced colleagues to assist you.
• An environment where you get the possibility to improve your current skills and develop new ones.
• An internship allowance.

About NLR

The Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) has been the ambitious research organisation with the will to keep innovating for over 100 years. With that drive, we make the world of transportation safer, more sustainable, more efficient and more effective. We are on the threshold of breakthrough innovations. Plans and ideas start to move when these are fed with the right energy. Over 900 driven professionals work on research and innovation. From aircraft engineers to psychologists and from mathematicians to application experts. Our colleagues are happy to tell you what it’s like to work at NLR.

About the department

The Avionics Systems team has the mission of realising and provide highly innovative avionics for civil and military platforms in the air and in space. The team is innovative, involved and practical minded. Colleagues with plenty of experience are always ready to support you in your project.