GeGS TTMS - Generic Ground Station Telemetry, Telecommand & Monitoring System

Usually such interfaces are proprietary and unilaterally optimised for one specific uplink equipment. Therefore there was the need to develop a generic interface which is capable of communicating with different kinds of ground station infrastructure applications.

Furthermore another part of this project was the accountability for a monitoring and control component of this interface in order to check the bit patterns which are transferred out of the Mission Control System (MCS) via the Telemetry and Telecommand System (TMTCS) up to the base-band equipment (e.g. IFMS). A well-designed, generic uplink interface was to be created, which is based on state-of-the art software and interface technologies. A message based interface that uses TCP/IP as physical interface was envisaged.

The already established interface between TCDS and IFMS (used for telemetry data) serves as a reference approach. A proper set of messages are defined that not only allows conveying commanding data units but also to exchange status and keep-alive messages which are required to maintain a state model of the uplink system and to convey relevant status information to the ground station’s management system.

A RISC-based Universal Communicator turned out to be the best approach to develop this interface. Finally a specific Test Automation Procedure including Spacecraft Simulators (SSFE) and Space Link Extensions (SLE) was carried out to simulate the whole Ground Station infrastructure by testing the generic interface and obtaining the relevant results.

Coordinator

Siemens AG Österreich / Space Business - Heinz Cech

Partner

Sphinx Computer - Markus Brenner

Siemens AG Österreich / Space Business
Heinz Cech & Thomas Schützenhofer
Gudrunstrasse 11 A-1101 Vienna
E-mail: heinz.cech@siemens.com
E-mail: thomas.schuetzenhofer@siemens.com
Web: www.siemens.at/space