Implementation of a Modern Internet Protocol-Based Communications System and Error Detection and Correction System for Commercial Memory within a Radiation Hardened FPGA for a Low-Earth-Orbit Satellite

There is a growing interest in the application of common terrestrial communications protocols, such as the Internet Protocol (IP), to spacecraft systems. There is also a desire to increase computing power through the use of commercial products with unknown or limited radiation survivability. Such interests are driven by the need to reduce the high costs of space technology while both standardizing and increasing capability. As part of the research process for Penn State’s Local Ionospheric Measurements Satellite (LionSat), a communications encoder was developed that implements IP and bi-phase L (BPL) encoding measures along with a data synchronizer to allow operation of a synchronous downlink using asynchronous data from the flight computer. Also developed was an error-detection-and-correction scheme to protect commercial high-speed SDRAM from multiple independent bit errors for a 32-bit Linux system. Both of these designs were created for implementation in a RadHard Aeroflex Eclipse FPGA and require a combined total of less than 45% of available logic cells. The resulting system provides a compact radiation-tolerant solution for the communication and memory assurance needs of a modern satellite flight computer