FPGA-based Nano-satellite development

Much of the commercial small-satellite electronics for navigation and payload operation are based on small off-the-shelf microcontrollers.

However the future of such space-hardened or space-ready functions are ideally suited to Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) solutions. In fact larger space-borne vehicles are beginning to standardise on the likes of electromagnetic interference (EMI) minimised avionics communications such as Spacewire which are ideally hosted in FPGAs, and more complex embedded tasks involving multiple controllers running in parallel - again ideally hosted in FPGAs. 

This project would investigate engineering both payload, communicationsm and avionics solutions for small to tiny satellites, including development of robust computation and communication packages for in-orbit experiments.

Supervisor