Over the last decades the number of satellites in orbit has been constantly growing and the spacecraft payload complexity and demand continuously increased. Today, satellites provide close to full Earth coverage and produce a significant amount of data that needs to be downlinked to Earth for processing. The downlink constraints combined with the constantly growing productivity of missions require faster data handling, processing and transfer. Present processing solutions show constraints regarding computational performance. Size and transfer speeds of on-board storage/mass memory limited downlink/transmission capabilities. Furthermore, existing toolchains are not able to support recent evolving technologies. S4Pro will design and implement enabling technology for high-end data products produced on-board spacecraft through the implementation of a power efficient high performance space processing chain designed for low-Earth orbit (LEO) missions with a focus on Earth observation and satellite communication systems. This implementation will be achieved through consequent optimisation of the payload data management system accompanied by use of COTS components, as well as by the miniaturisation of high-performance hardware. S4Pro will combine state-of-the-art industrial computing technologies (COTS), equipped with advanced and scalable processing capabilities, and space qualified BSOTA computing platforms in order to optimise the data processing chain and support the next generation of data intensive missions, such as high data rate SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and optical applications as well as powerful regenerative communication processors in SATCOM applications.

The objective of this project is to provide a basis upon which Galileo can be relied upon to the same extent that GPS is currently, especially by the Aviation user community and then beyond. It is proposed that DWI’s existing GNSS Performance Monitoring System (GPMS) is enhanced to include EGNSS and this platform can latterly include other constellations and augmentations for use beyond Europe. The project shall gather EGNSS signal data for analysis and comparison thereby providing the aviation community the confidence they need for including EGNSS within their planning for navigation. It will monitor new signals alongside the GPS signals and provide operationally relevant information to existing and new users of the GPMS. In addition, the system will be updated to include the capability for the monitoring of interference and spoofing.

SoN3S has the ambitious aim to perform the technical and economic feasibility study of a new Software Defined Satellite Navigation Security Simulator that meets the new requirements (security, flexibility, frequent upgrade, lower cost) emerged from the market evolution, initially targeting satellite navigation security and then extending the same approach to other space assets. The global core market of satellite navigation is more than 100 billion euros, representing an extremely promising opportunity for the exploitation of this new requirements not yet satisfied by competing products. Current satellite navigation simulators rely on costly hardware for real time generation and transmission of the signal, mainly due computational power advantages. This however drastically increases costs and complexity of the product, reduces flexibility and upgradability as well as forces costly sales and distribution strategies. Technically, the project has the ambition to tackle the issues of producing a real time fully software simulator exploiting the computational power available in standard PCs and combined with only an low cost USB hardware (from less than € 100, for the up-conversion of the signal). Economically, the study will tackle new software oriented sales paradigm and marketing strategies with respect to the standard distribution chain in hardware simulators. This is particularly important for the security features, that will be provided with monthly updates and it is expected to follow a similar approach to daily desktop software. Software as a Service paradigm will also be investigated from the technical (bandwidth issues) and commercial point of view. The combination of the technical and economic feasibility study will pose the basis to create e dramatic innovation in the simulation markets.