Space satellites already give essential services to mankind and will continue in the future as the launch cost is less expensive and new techniques make satellites more agile and capacitive.
Reducing size and increasing power capabilities of electronic devices is of major importance for the overall performance of any satellite.
In Telecommunication industry, the space market is more and more challenged and its response towards always greater competitive solutions is aiming at High / Very High Throughput Satellites (HTS/VHTS), offering significant growth in satellite capacity and lower Gbps prices (for geostationary satellites as well as constellations).
In Navigation applications, increasing power and strength of signals is a key for improving accuracy and services of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).
In Observation domain (video or radar), very high-speed compression system as well as higher storage capacity to cope with the higher resolution are needed to get better accuracy and transmit larger data to store in a shorter time.
Consequently, satellites subsystems are evolving to be massively “digitalized” owing to the introduction of highly integrated digital core (FPGA, ASIC, Micro-Controller or Micro- Processors) and so facing increasing power demand to send back data to earth.
For new actors, mainly in constellations, the challenge is also to be able to open and operate the service earlier, quite soon after reaching the funding. So the time-to-market is essential and the ability to propose and implement building blocks not only easing the design & development but also streamlining the manufacturing & testing is a key asset.
Digitalization has several impacts in satellite hardware units definition:
- Introduction of numerous highly integrated digital cores (ASICs, FPGA, micro-processors, IA) is on-going requiring very low voltages but very high currents (several tens of Amperes) ; supplying each of them with 1 or 2 power supplies core is done owing to the state-of-the-art discrete power devices (GaN transistors, planar magnetics …), but is now reaching its limits:
- New digital cores requires much higher current than the power switches can handle even with recent innovations; several more power cores in parallel are necessary to supply them (see Digital Core road map & EleGaNT project.
- The size & mass of the power supply system is becoming a system issue as the control section is limited in performance (switching frequency & sensitivity of analog devices to radiations requiring external filters) & scalability (not more than 2 device in parallel so far).
- Active antennas are requiring compacts and programmable controlled power supplies to ease the system & service. As the power devices are drastically smaller thanks to new technologies, the control sections are to be miniaturized also.
In this frame, the SCOPS device will provide the Space Community with a reliable and affordable scalable power controller circuit suited for the needs of the current and next generation of space based Data Processing Units. This will unleash the power of the very high end data processing elements currently available in the market. Many devices and technologies developed and extended on the ground have serious difficulties to be translated into Space due to its ever evolving and increasing power needs. SCOPS will break this barrier and will allow the Space European partners to quickly adopt powerful data processing solutions for many applications, among others:
- Advanced telecom processors for 5G networks and beyond.
- Autonomous Video Processors for Earth Observation.
- AI oriented data processors for autonomous missions in all domains (science, exploration, telecom and EO).
- Processors for Space Data Centers that provide in-orbit data processing capacity to different end users.
In addition to this, SCOPS will be just the first implementation of an innovative distributed architecture to a Space Grade part. Once its benefits are perceived by the Space community, new evolutions of the SCOPS circuit will be designed to cover specific needs and evolutions in the market.
As shown, SCOPS ASIC shall allow the development of high current, medium and high power DC/DC converters to be applied in the following devices:
- High capacity on board data processors for Telecom, AI on board and Video Processing
- SDR payloads
- RF Units
- Any other high power consumption space grade equipment