Untersuchungen zur Anwendung des CAN für Kleinsatelliten

Abstract

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite Networks are currently established as a novel basis for mobile communication and earth observation including traffic and environmental monitoring. These LEO-satellites are built under stringent commercial constraints and call therefore for new concepts in terms of cost reduction compared to the well established technologies for geostationary telecommunication satellites. The onboard automation plays a key role for the autonomous operation of the satellites within the network. Cost reduction potentials in this area are found through the implementation of functional redundancy to decrease the overall number of equipment and through the use of well proven industrial terrestrial (off-the-shelf) technologies for the onboard realization. Functional redundancy for the onboard automation requires appropriate bus-technologies for an efficient realtime communication with maximum freedom for reconfiguration. Due to its source from automotive applications the CAN bus technology is a very promising candidate in terms of functionality, performance and cost. This paper presents the dimensioning requirements and a first analysis of the applicability of the CAN for LEO-satellites.