Abstract：Application-specific data processing units (DPUs) are commonly adopted for operational control and data processing in space missions. To overcome the limitations of traditional radiation-hardened or fully commercial design approaches, a reconfigurable-system-on-chip (RSoC) solution based on state-of-the-art FPGA is introduced. The flexibility and reliability of this approach are outlined, and the requirements for an enhanced RSoC design with inflight reconfigurability for space applications are presented. This design has been demonstrated as an on-board computer prototype, providing an in-flight reconfigurable DPU design approach using integrated hardwired processors. Keywords：RSoC; in-flight reconfigurability; spaceborne data processing unit Data processing units (DPUs) are used as interface between the spacecraft and on-board payloads, providing operational control and specific data processing of scientific space instruments. These DPUs should provide sufficient computation capability, mission-specific radiation tolerance, low power consumption, volume and mass, and adequate reliability at moderate unit costs. For highspeed applications (e.g., image data compression, highspeed data storage), DPUs have to handle data up to several hundred Mbits per second.Implementation approaches for DPUs in traditional designs are radiation-hardened (RH) discrete components (typically low performance), application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) of high quality level (typically costly) or commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) approach (high performance but typically devices screening efforts are needed).The major disadvantage of these traditional approaches is low design flexibility. A change in function or data processing algorithm results in major hardware design changes or, if implemented in software, reduced performance.In contrast, reconfigurable-system-on-chip (RSoC) DPUs have already been successfully demonstrated in recent ESA and NASA space missions (e.g., ESA VE-NUS EXPRESS [1] , NASA DAWN). In this paper we briefly compare these approaches with respect to the requirements and present an RSoC DPU design with inflight reconfigurability using embedded hardwired processor. This DPU has been developed, tested and integrated in Lyra satellite on-board computer prototype and works well up to now.
