Integrated Flight Hardware and Software Platform for Space Mesh Networking

Emergent Space Technologies, Inc. (Emergent) propose the development of AVALANCHE (A Very Adaptive LEO Area Network Containing High Expediency), which is a turn-key solution for spacecraft bus integrators to bolt on a networking router/switch with an integrated flight software (FSW) network stack that shields the developers from the many complexities of the network architecture. Emergent is teaming with Innoflight for this effort, who will be advancing and providing their space router/switch implementation to support communications speeds up to 10 Gbps. The space router/switch implementation can be burned to an FPGA on the flight qualified CFC-400X processor. Since spacecraft radios and transceivers historically support point-to-point communications only, they don’t benefit from the same infrastructure as terrestrial communications standards and equipment. While space hardware routers/switches will provide standard TCP/IP feature stacks, what they won’t provide is position, navigation, timing (PNT), routing, and radio capabilities knowledge. This is where Emergent’s FSW features provide the enhancements needed to inform the hardware networking equipment where FPGA development of these capabilities would be cost prohibitive and lack the ability to upgrade after launch. This space mesh networking solution should become a commodity package that all spacecraft vendors can leverage for linking into the National Defense Space Architecture (NDSA) space mesh network. While Emergent’s FSW is designed to be agnostic to the hardware implementation, the CFC-400X will fly on all SDA Transport and Tracking Layer Tranche 0 spacecraft. Taking the integrated Emergent FSW and Innoflight hardware approach provides a fast-to-market timeframe for the SDA and a feasible commercialization strategy for both Emergent and Innoflight. The turnkey space mesh networking solution coupled with commodity spacecraft buses provides SDA and other DoD/IC customers the ability to rapidly deploy new networked Warfighter applications. Since much of the technology is already developed, this effort covers incremental technology improvements, hardware and FSW integration, network performance evaluation, and simulations of relevant mission scenarios.