Satellite Instrument Control Unit with Artificial Intelligence engine on a Single Chip

As the number of earth observation missions increases, and so does the number of images acquired by satellites, the need of optimizing on-board mass-memory allocation and data transmitted to ground becomes more and more important, as both are limited resources. Currently, large players in the space industry are still designign Instrument Control Units which are largely customized so, once developed, they can only be exploited for the single mission they have been designed for. On the other hand, the unavailability of commercial flexible, programmable and space-qualified solutions ready to be integrated keeps small-medium enterprises out of this market, since mostly large-scale integrators have the resources needed to undertake custom development at unit level.
The Instrument Control Unit with Artificial Intelligence Engine System on Chip presented in this work aims at changing the rules of image/data handling and processing on-board satellites, overcoming the downsides of the current scenario both at the technological and industry level.
The core of the proposed system is a soft-programmable hardware GPU, referred to as FGPU from now on, which integrates an artificial intelligence engine able to deliver an innovative fully programmable data handling and data processing system on a chip. The envisaged embedded system can analyse and process the data acquired directly on-board, using artificial intelligence and computer vision algorithms, to discharge unwanted data and transmit only the meaningful ones. It is also fully re-configurable, to allow for the retargeting of earth observation missions as monitoring needs change, even temporarily.
At a broader industry level, the commercial availability of such a solution would translate into an enlarged room for Small Medium Enterprises for leading independently space missions and projects, hence wider business opportunities in the space domain.
The adopted approach leverages three highly innovative, open-source components at the advanced technology readiness level: the RISC-V processor as a command-and-control platform; the FGPU provided by B-TU as hardware accelerator for computer vision and artificial intelligence algorithms; and the SpaceFibre/SpaceWire as communication module. The three components are integrated into a single modular, flexible, and powerful embedded architecture on a single chip, and more in particular on a space-grade FPGA.