In an ongoing quest to have effective space-based earth monitoring and communication links, we aim to develop a network architecture, which can be applied to constellations of very small satellites to replace one day existing large multifunctional satellites. The motivation behind the current trend of reducing spacecraft size is that it is cheaper to mass produce and launch smaller satellites, compared to building and launching a large satellite in orbit nowadays. A constellation of picosatellites that weigh less than 1 kg and can carry a few of instruments is the proposed application for this research. These picosatellites will create flexible ad-hoc network clusters and a combination of such clusters would form the constellation, each cluster will have picosatellites that shall perform a specific function depending on the sensors it would carry as payload, a number of such different satellites will contribute to the same functionality as that of today’s larger satellites.
Our focus is on the development of effective network and piconode architectures targeting applications where reliability, robustness, flexibility and long network and node life are of prime importance. A unique consortium has been formed to address the issues and is known as the ESPACENET project: Evolvable Networks of Intelligent and Secure Integrated and Distributed Reconfigurable System-On-Chip Sensor Nodes for Aerospace-Based Monitoring and Diagnostics.
Collaborators
- University of Edinburgh (Prof Tughrul Arslan)
- University of Essex
- University of Kent
