High-Performance Embedded Computing in Space: Evaluation of Platforms for Vision-Based Navigation

Abstract

Vision-based navigation has become increasingly important in a variety of space applications for enhancing autonomy and dependability. Future missions, such as active debris removal for remediating the low Earth orbit environment, will rely on novel high-performance avionics to support advanced image processing algorithms with substantial workloads. However, when designing new avionics architectures, constraints relating to the use of electronics in space present great challenges, further exacerbated by the need for significantly faster processing compared to conventional space-grade central processing units. With the long-term goal of designing highperformance embedded computers for space, in this paper, an extended study and tradeoff analysis of a diverse set of computing platforms and architectures (i.e., central processing units, multicore digital signal processors, graphics processing units, and field-programmable gate arrays) are performed with radiation-hardened and commercial offthe-shelf technology. Overall, the study involves more than 30 devices and 10 benchmarks, which are selected after exploring the algorithms and specifications required for vision-based navigation. The present analysis combines literature survey and in-house development/testing to derive a sizable consistent picture of all possible solutions. Among others, the results show that certain 28 nm system-on-chip devices perform faster than space-grade and embedded central processing units by 1-3 orders of magnitude, while consuming less than 10 W. Field-programmable gate array platforms provide the highest performance per watt ratio.

A Smart Fault Detection Scheme for Reliable Image Processing Applications

“…In all cases, the incurred performance degradation is significant. On the other hand, there is a growing demand for both high performance and reliability in modern space applications, as recently discussed in [8]. Thus, we believe that the smart checking scheme proposed in this paper can represent a step towards fast and reliable applications in aerospace.…”

Towards the Concurrent Execution of Multiple Hyperspectral Imaging Applications by Means of Computationally Simple Operations

“…Consequently, real-time on-board processing has become a very interesting topic within the remote-sensing field to provide a solution to this type of applications [14,15,22,23]. In the space domain, this is due to the fact that both the acquisition rates of the next-generation hyperspectral sensors and the computational capabilities of the latest-generation space-grade hardware devices are growing [24]. Additionally, the trend for CubeSats is to use common System on Chip (SoC) devices with commercial FPGAs due to their superior performance in terms of power, speed and resources compared to radiation-hardened FPGAs [15,25].…”

Run-Time Reconfigurable MPSoC-Based On-Board Processor for Vision-Based Space Navigation

“…For these reasons, VBN has been identified as one of the applications requiring high-performance embedded computing in space. From this perspective, Lentaris et al provide in [5] an extensive evaluation of multiple computing platforms specific for VBN systems, concluding that new-generation space-grade CPUs are still one order of magnitude slower than what is needed for reliable autonomous VBN.…”