This paper presents the implementation of a Software Defined Radio receiver in compliance with the CCSDS 131.2-B standard. Such standard has been defined for all the missions which require high data rate transmissions, especially for Earth Observation missions, and makes use of Serially Concatenated Convolutional Code encoding. In this scope, the SDR receiver presented has been implemented, exploiting parallel processing, enhanced by the use of GPU, for dealing with the high data rate required by the CCSDS 131.2-B. The presented receiver represents a low-cost solution with respect to the State of The Art HW receivers.The paper gives an introduction about CCSDS 131.2-B standard and Graphics Processing Unit exposing the rationale for the implementation of a GPU-based SDR. Then the architecture of the receiver is described, focusing on the parallel computation that have been developed on GPU. Lastly the performance of the receiver are described in terms of data rate and bit error rate.

In recent years, the number of Earth Observation missions has been exponentially increasing. Satellites dedicated to these missions usually embark with payloads that produce large amount of data and that need to be transmitted towards ground stations, in time-limited windows. Moreover, the noisy nature of the link between satellites and ground stations makes it hard to achieve reliable communication. To address these problems, a standard for a flexible advanced coding and modulation scheme for high-rate telemetry applications has been defined by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS). The defined standard, referred to as CCSDS 131.2-B, makes use of Serially Concatenated Convolutional Codes (SCCC) based on 27 ModCods to optimize transmission quality. A limiting factor in the adoption of this standard is represented by the complexity and the cost of the hardware required for developing high-performance receivers. In the last decade, the performance of software has grown due to the advancement of general-purpose processing hardware, leading to the development of many high-performance software systems even in the telecommunication sector. These are commonly referred to as Software-Defined Radio (SDR), indicating a radio communication system in which components that are usually implemented in hardware, by means of FPGAs or ASICs, are instead implemented in software, offering many advantages such as flexibility, modularity, extensibility, cheaper maintenance, and cost saving. This paper proposes the development of an SDR based on NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units (GPU) for implementing the receiver end of the CCSDS 131.2-B standard. At first, a brief description of the CCSDS 131.2-B standard is given, focusing on the architecture of the transmitter and receiver sides. Then, the receiver architecture is shown, giving an overview of its functional blocks and of the implementation choices made to optimize the processing of the signal, especially for the SCCC Decoder. Finally, the performance of the system is analyzed in terms of data-rate and error correction and compared with other SW systems to highlight the achieved improvements. The presented system has been demonstrated to be a perfect solution for CCSDS 131.2-B-compliant device testing and for its use in science missions, providing a valid low-cost alternative with respect to the state-of-the-art HW receivers.

The on-board communication standard adopted in current generation space missions of the European Space Agency, and many other agencies as well, is SpaceWire (SpW). In a SpW network, data are exchanged as well-formed packets, whose structure offers low packet overhead and allows developers to tailor their implementation for SpW applications. The development of SpW-compliant devices requires a specific set of test instruments, namely Electrical Ground Support Equipment (EGSE), to verify the correct functionality of SpW units under test. An example of a SpW EGSE is the SpaceART EGSE Emulator, an EGSE for generation and processing of SpW packets for a time-constrained use-case scenario. This EGSE has been developed to address a mission-related SpW communication between a device and an Instrument Control Unit (ICU). It has allowed the generation and processing of specific SpW packets, which cannot be provided by the mostly used general-purpose SpW EGSEs. In this scope, the SpaceART SpW Sniffer, a SpW link analyser for unobtrusive monitoring of SpW link, has been employed to run a comprehensive set of tests and provide further information on the considered scenario. The SpaceART EGSE Emulator-ICU communication has been thoroughly tested through the SpaceART SpW Sniffer, unobtrusively analysing the exchanged data and allowing to assess the compliance with the defined time constraints from an external point of view. The use of the Sniffer has been crucial for testing the on-board communication, providing important support for the success of the mission employing the tested ICU.

This paper presents an extension of the SpaceART EGSE to support the WizardLink protocol, a high-speed data transfer protocol for space applications. SpaceART is a real-time analyser and EGSE developed by IngeniArs, which supports SpaceWire and SpaceFibre protocols and can now also be used to test systems based on WizardLink protocol. WizardLink is a basic protocol defined by Texas Instruments and implemented in the TLK2711 chip, which provides several features that make it suitable for space applications, i.e., high-speed serial communication up to 2.5 Gbps, low power consumption, radiation tolerance and basic error detection.In this paper, the SpaceART WizardLink extension is presented, focusing on the description of its new features, Graphical User Interface and Application Programming Interface.A typical WizardLink scenario is presented as use-case for the usage of SpaceART WizardLink, involving the Payload Data Transmission section of an Earth Observation satellite. In this context, SpaceART WizardLink was used to implement an emulator for the Mass Memory.

This paper describes how different IP Cores for on-board high-speed data interfaces have been developed and verified by IngeniArs S.r.l. These are the CODECs and Routers implementing SpaceWire and SpaceFibre communication protocols, i.e., the actual state-of-the-art for on-board data exchange in space applications. In addition, the WizardLink Front-End is presented.These IP Cores have not only been integrated into the space flight hardware of various European Space Agency missions, but have also been used for Electrical Ground Support Equipment (EGSE) implementation and in validation environments for other IP Cores, such as high-speed encoders and modulators.