FPGA as an Accelerator in Satellite Ground Station for Data Reception and Processing

Abstract

In this paper a data acquisition system which is a combination of hardware and software modules provide solution for high frequency data acquisition and processing for the upcoming satellites. The data acquisition system consists of FPGA based hardware for high frequency satellite data reception, preprocessing along with software modules for few elements of higher level processing thus providing near real time processed output products. The demodulator which receives the Intermediate Frequency data demodulates it, can also archive data in the raw form without any preprocessing done on it. But with the in house developed hardware presented in this paper, it enables us to receive and process the demodulated signal from the demodulator on this hardware and transfer to the system housing the hardware, thereby enabling real time data processing of data and structured data archival on system for further processing in near real time. Thus the FPGA provides the service of data acquisition and processing for all the missions in the ground station before it is archived for permanent and structured data. A new high frequency data acquisition system designed to receive data at 2.88 GHz coming from satellites are encoded, encrypted and compressed which are decoded, decrypted and decompressed in the hardware using the data acquisition system. The FPGA hardware, software and server architecture enable us to receive and process high frequency satellite data, such as those transmitted by Cartosat-2S, Cartosat-3 and the upcoming NISAR.