Beyond Connectivity: Intelligent Object-Oriented Wireless Management

Increasingly complex and the larger numbers of small spacecraft place ever worsening demands on sensor and avionic subsystem connectivity and integration.nbsp; At the same time, accelerating spacecraft development schedules mean less time available for fully custom system implementation on every project.nbsp; Spacecraft system developers and operators need commonality for avionic and sensor subsystem integration.nbsp; Common components, software, interface specifications support technology reuse, speeding development and testing, lowering costs and significantly improving system reliability.Simultaneously, spacecraft must benefit from the latest wireless communications, sensors, avionics and component technologies.nbsp; Short-range (i.e. wireless local area networks, WLAN or Wi-Fi) systems have now evolved to support the high level of reliability required by small spacecraft avionics system and sensor interconnectivity.nbsp; This makes practical wireline to wireless replacement for a large part of spacecraftrsquo;s internal and nearby communications requirements.Wireless communications replacing wires is likely to reduce size, weight and power (SWaP); however, more importantly, this change simplifies and adds flexibility to system development and maintenance.nbsp; Simplification also fosters common interfacing and thereby subsystem component and software reuse.nbsp; New Wi-Fi systems support higher data rates often exceeding those of legacy wired systems.nbsp; The ease of adding redundancy to these systems as well improves overall system reliability.Innoflightrsquo;s radiation hardened Wi-Fi systems development provides a path to more efficient, reliable and cost effective spacecraft avionics and sensor system implementation.