Fault-Tolerant Onboard Digital Information Switching and Routing for Communications Satellites

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Fault-Tolerant Onboard Digital Information Switching and Routing for Communications Satellites

M. J. Shalkhauser / J. A. Quintana / N. J. Soni / H. Kim

The NASA Lewis Research Center is developing an information-switching processor for future meshed very-small-aperture terminal (VSAT) communications satellites. The information-switching processor will switch and route baseband user data onboard the VSAT satellite to connect thousands of Earth terminals. Fault tolerance is a critical issue in developing information-switching processor circuitry that will provide and maintain reliable communications services. In parallel with the conceptual development of the meshed VSAT satellite network architecture, NASA designed and built a simple test bed for developing and demonstrating baseband switch architectures and fault-tolerance techniques. The meshed VSAT architecture and the switching demonstration test bed are described, and the initial switching architecture and the fault-tolerance techniques that were developed and tested are discussed.