This paper presents a framework for integrating Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) platforms with Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) in the emerging 6G communication landscape. Our work applies the Mega-Constellation Services in Space (MCSS) paradigm, leveraging LEO mega-constellations’ expansive coverage and capacity, designed initially for terrestrial devices, to serve platforms in lower LEO orbits. Results show that this approach overcomes the limitation of sporadic and time-bound satellite communication links, a challenge not fully resolved by available Ground Station Networks and Data Relay Systems. We contribute three key elements: (i) a detailed MCSS evaluation framework employing Monte Carlo simulations to assess space user links and distributions; (ii) a novel Space User Terminal (SUT) design optimized for MCSS, using different configurations and 5G New Radio Adaptive Coding and Modulation; (iii) extensive results demonstrating MCSS’s substantial improvement over existing Ground Station Networks and Data Relay Systems, motivating its role in the upcoming 6G NTNs. The space terminal, incorporating a multi-system, multi-orbit, and software-defined architecture, can handle Terabit-scale daily data volumes and minute-scale latencies. It offers a compact, power-efficient solution for properly integrating LEO platforms as space internet nodes.

Recently there has been an increasing demand for more powerful processors for the next-generation space missions, such as communication and earth observation. The challenge is how to improve the reliability of the processor under the “single event effects” in orbit. We have previously proposed a new way of implementing any traditional software error detection and correction techniques at instruction level, capable of covering both the CPU and caches of “commercial off the shelf” processors. In this paper, a novel way of evaluation of the software protection is presented, based on a theoretical model and software injection experiments to predict the reliability of the whole processing architecture. The fault injection will evaluate the ability of the protection code to detect and recover errors in addition to the accuracy of the reliability models, by comparing the reliability of the theoretical predictions to the reliability of the injection experiments. Automatic compiler error detection and recovery improves the reliability of the system by reducing the error rate of “single event upsets.” In some benchmarks, the error rate was reduced to less than 1%. This research has been tested in two machines; Intel core i5-3470 and a Raspberry Pi 3. On the first processor, the overhead was less than 15%, and on the second one, the overhead was less than 17%. This research can also be ported to multiple high level languages, with the ability to cover multiple instructions and datatypes.

This paper describes an agent platform based on the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Systems Abstract Architecture, which, together with a highly fault tolerant, bio-inspired hardware architecture, aims to increase the reliability of future, low-cost satellites. To achieve the stringent operational requirements imposed by the real-time and resource-constrained environment of a satellite, the Hybrid Agent Real-Time Platform (HARP) distinguishes itself from other platforms in three areas. Firstly, the HARP middleware uses discrete processors, instead of virtual machines or interpreters, as its agent execution environment. This has the advantage of reducing the agency memory footprint and enabling agents to perform real-time tasks. Secondly, the HARP communication stack makes use of ISO-TP over CAN 2.0A as its transfer level protocol, cutting out resource-intensive layers such as HTTP and IIOP. In addition, the communication stack allows real-time CAN traffic to share the network and be given priority over Agent Communication Language messages. Finally, the HARP middleware embeds a peer-to-peer task manager in each agency, allowing systems which are built using the bio-inspired Artificial Stem Cell Architecture and HARP middleware to autonomously reconfigure in the event of failures. The detailed design of the HARP middleware is given, together with details of an implementation of the HARP middleware on a set of prototype satellite hardware. The performance and scaling potential of the middleware, determined through a set of physical experiments, provide evidence of the practical feasibility of the proposed architecture.

Significant advances in spaceborne imaging payloads have resulted in new big data problems in the Earth Observation (EO) field. These challenges are compounded onboard satellites due to a lack of equivalent advancement in onboard data processing and downlink technologies. We have previously proposed a new GPU accelerated onboard data processing architecture and developed parallelised image processing software to demonstrate the achievable data processing throughput and compression performance. However, the environmental characteristics are distinctly different to those on Earth, such as available power and the probability of adverse single event radiation effects. In this paper, we analyse new performance results for a low power embedded GPU platform, investigate the error resilience of our GPU image processing application and offer two new error resilient versions of the application. We utilise software based error injection testing to evaluate data corruption and functional interrupts. These results inform the new error resilient methods that also leverages GPU characteristics to minimise time and memory overheads. The key results show that our targeted redundancy techniques reduce the data corruption from a probability of up to 46 percent to now less than 2 percent for all test cases, with a typical execution time overhead of 130 percent.

Space and satellite systems are considered to be the most extreme environment to design for and are fraught with engineering difficulty. Performance metrics such as fault tolerance, reliability, pre-determinism and heritage are still high of the list of requirements for all missions. But with the advent of modern day electronics, greater computing capability and networking technologies have enabled research into distributed satellite systems, where multiple spacecraft work collaboratively to perform a mission. Leveraging from these technologies, a satellite can be considered one of many nodes in an autonomous system. This paper proposes the use of an Agent based computing platform to solve orbit dynamics problems leading to a highly mobile and decentralized system. The latest Agent platforms are compared and possible Agent applications are presented; specifically, distributed image compression and a novel topology reconfiguration scheme.