SCCC SW EGSE: A software simulator of a satellite downlink communication compliant with the CCSDS 131.2-B-1 standard, with Hardware-In-The-Loop capabilities

Abstract

Nowadays the number of Earth Observation (EO) missions are exponentially increasing. Each satellite may embark payloads which produce a big amount of data, up to Gb/s. CCSDS 131.2-B-l standard is suitable for this kind of missions, in particular for those in which data have to be transmitted to the ground in varying orbit conditions, e.g., Low Earth Orbit (LEO) missions. Since the available systems for the validation of the CCSDS 131.2-B-l compliant device are usually expensive, the adoption of this standard for low budget missions (e.g., missions based on nano and micro satellites) is not widespread. In this paper, the SCCC SW EGSE is presented, a software tool which allows to simulate and test CCSDS 131.2-B-l compliant transmitters during development phase. SCCC SW EGSE is also equipped with hardware-in-the-loop capability, and therefore represents an affordable and complete solution supporting the development of CCSDS 131.2-B-l transmitters, from the algorithm modelling phase down to the hardware implementation.