This article describes an avionic architecture reduce the effort of developing a small satellite launch vehicle of an avionics system. This system should be adaptable to development changes with minimal effort and cost. Using Plug & Fly Avionics (PAFA) as an avionics platform approach that adapts itself, by being self-configuring, as the connected hardware is recognized by the platform. It can run on commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) components, thus helps keeping development and production cost and finally launch costs to a minimum, while providing a high degree of customization per launch. While PAFA is capable of recognizing and process sensors and actuators, a suitable orchrstration environment for the platform has not yet been created. This poses a significant challenge as, at present, each PAFA software component and associated system function would require its own computer or a manually set-up partitioned environment. To ease this, the presented approach proposes the integration of an orchestrated virtualization via Xen hypervisor and API, which is not yet part of the PAFA concept. Partition orchestration is necessary to set-up all mission-dependent PAFA services such as platform discovery and PAFA execution instance. A potential option for safely integrating arbitrary third party software, such as a database, would also simplify development. For instance, this would simplfy sensor and actuator values to be stored for telemetry or monitoring. In this article, an architecture concept is presented that addresses these issues and seeks to reduce the effirt of developing a new launch vehicle while maintaining safety and increase flexibility. For this a computer with ARM processors is investigated as a virtualized system. The Xen hypervisor operates in a hybrid mode to distinguish between three different partition types: safety-critical, none safety-critical and “Legacy”. Safety-critical system functions run as paravirtualized Xen Dom0less guests in a Real Time Operating System (RTOS). Non safety-critical functions also host a RTOS but as DomUs under the control of Xen Dom0. Legacy system functions run on any Xen compatible OS partition. All virtual PAFA participants are connected to each other via a network bridge and are recognized by the platform discovery function. To enable the connection between PAFA and the Xen hypervisor, a novel API was developed to serve as a bridge between virtualization and the avionics platform. The API server runs in the Dom0 partition. An infrastructure-as-code file is used, to prepare the virtualized environment via orchestration so that the required services and system functions can be executed on the individual partition types within the system. API calls can be made throughout the entire system due to the shared network, allowing health monitoring operations to check the functionality of the partitions. Additionally, the robustness of the system is ensured through a simple fall-back orchestration. Overall a combination of the PAFA concept and virtualization through Xen is a promising approach to address the challenges of launch vehicle development.
Hypervisors and Plug & Fly in a new Space Launcher. A scalable approach to enhance Space Launcher development
2024-09-29
750184 byte
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
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