Adaptation of a Fault-Tolerant Fpga-Based Launch Sequencer as a Cubesat Payload Processor

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to design and test a fault tolerant reduced instruction set computer processor running a subset of the multiprocessor without interlocked pipelined stages instruction set. This processor is implemented on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and will be used as the foundation for a payload processor on a cube satellite developed at the Naval Postgraduate School. This thesis begins by considering the radiation effects present in the space environment and the various fault tolerant designs used to guard against specific types of particle events. The internal triple modular redundancy method is selected and implemented at each pipeline stage of the processor. Next, a target FPGA is selected based on the performance requirements of the processor. The Virtex 5 (registered trademark of Xilinx, Inc.) is selected over the ProASIC3 (registered trademark of Microsemi, Inc.) due to its enhanced capabilities and potential to support expansion for future applications. The hardware design is presented as a hybrid Verilog and schematic based design. The system consists of the processor and a universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter that reads and writes data received from a generic serial interface. The device is simulated to ensure proper logic functionality. Conclusions and future work are discussed.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2014
Accession Number
ADA607886

Entities

People

  • Jordan K. Goff

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Artificial Satellites
  • Circuits
  • Computer Programming
  • Computers
  • Environment
  • Field Programmable Gate Arrays
  • Instruction Set Architecture
  • Integrated Circuits
  • Logic Gates
  • Microarchitecture
  • Radiation
  • Semiconductor Devices
  • Semiconductors
  • Space Environments
  • Spacecraft
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Transmitters

Readers

  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Satellites