GROUND SEGMENT

EGSE and SCOE

TSD has a long experience with development of EGSEs and SCOEs in the frame of several national and international programs. EGSEs and SCOEs are based on specifically defined architectures able to test the flight items in a representative H/W environment. This is possible thanks to architectural solutions based not only on commercially available equipment but, when necessary, also on custom parts, thus ensuring an accurate simulation of the flight operative conditions in terms of timing, bit rate, parallelism, etc. A partial list of main items developed comprises:

  • EGSE for the Payload of PRISMA Hyper-Spectral Earth Observation Satellite
  • SCOEs for SENTINEL-3 Program (OLCI Camera SCOE, OLCI Instrument SCOE and MIL-STD-1553B SCOE)
  • EGSE for the ISS EML Digital Video System
  • SCOE for ACS I/F and HK boards of SAR-LUPE Satellite Management Unit
  • SCOE for ACS I/F and HK boards of ARGO Satellite Management Unit
  • Ground Support & Test Equipment for the Payload Data Handling System of FOTON 12, M1, M2 and M3 satellites
  • EGSE for VIRTIS Instrument (Rosetta Spacecraft and Venus Express)
  • SCOE for the USV On-board Software Integration and Validation
  • Ground Support & Test Equipment for experimental modules flown on board TEXUS 34, MINITEXUS 5, MAXUS 5, MASER 6,8,10,11,12,13 Sounding Rockets
  • Transportable Ground Station for a Stratospheric Balloon Telecommand System

Command & Telemetry Ground Units

  • PC-based Architecture with Windows OS
  • FPGA-based PCI Board for H/W coding/decoding algorithms execution
  • User-friendly and Intuitive HMI
  • Wide Range of configuration parameters and status
  • High Integration with enhanced performances, upgradeability and flexibility
  • I/F to Modulator: RS422 Data + Clock
  • I/F to Bit Synchronizer: RS422 Data + Clock
  •  TM GSE Functionalities:
    • Viterbi Decoder
    • NRZ-M to NRZ-L Decoder
    • Pseudo De-Randomizer
    • Reed Solomon Decoder
    • Frame Synchronizer
    • CCSDS FRAME Decoder and CCSDS TM source packets Reassembly
  •  TC GSE Functionalities:
    • CCSDS TC Encoding,
    • COP-1 Procedures
    • TC Authentication Layer

TSD I/F Bridge

The TSD l/F Bridge has been conceived as a general purpose communication device to be used with flight units to allow complete testing during the different phases (development, pre-flight, post-flight). The unit implements a bridge between on-board l/Fs (such as SpaceWire, SerDes, etc.) and standard Ethernet. It offers the following key features:

  • open architecture easily customizable with every type of l/F circuits (thanks to internal expansion boards)
  • fully integrated solution, user friendly environment with High level MMI
  • standard 2U unit desktop mount (optionally 19” rack-mountable)
  • air cooling design
  • standard 230Vac power input

For different on-board l/Fs the bridge can be easily customized.

The TSD l/F Bridge is based on a proprietary main board designed around a state-of-art FPGA with embedded microcontroller.

Baseline interfaces (like Ethernet, UART, SpaceWire, CameraLink) are implemented on the main card. Interface controllers are embedded in FPGA to improve system integration.

Custom interfaces can be implemented on mezzanine card. Expansion connectors are directly routed to main board FPGA.