ESOC Ground Segments - The Future?

The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) is currently carrying out an ambitious program to standardize the infrastructure used throughout its ground segments in an effort to improve the reliability, cost effectiveness and interoperability. The end product of this program will be the ESA Ground Operation System (EGOS). This paper summarizes the program rational, its goals, the architecture, development approach and current status. I. Introduction A. Overview SOC is responsible for the provision of ground segments for the operation and control of many ESA missions. The scope of the ground segment encompasses the elements required on ground to provide the requisite monitoring and control capabilities. This ranges from the groundstations, through the mission control and flight dynamics functionality, to the archiving and distribution of data to the science community and, in some cases, the initial processing of science data. The provision of simulators for training and operations validation purposes is also covered. Many of the systems that are used in the ground segment have been developed in the past using a variety of different technologies and policies, quite often as standalone projects which did not take into account other developments. EGOS is therefore intended to provide a more standardised infrastructure, which encourages systematic reuse and thus reduce development and maintenance costs. The approach adopted is to use well established S/W engineering principles, build on existing systems and experience, use international standards where available and avoid proprietary systems/standards where possible. Initially EGOS is concentrating on the areas of mission control systems, simulators and some of the ground station equipment, in particular the base-band systems and ground station monitoring and control. In the longer term it is envisaged that the scope will be extended to cover satellite electrical ground support equipment (EGSE), flight dynamics and mission planning systems. EGOS must also permit easy expandability, as it is not possible to forecast with certainty future system requirements. The approach adopted in the architecture is one of a service oriented system based on component application development. The service and component architectures represent two views of the system and are therefore not mutually exclusive, but complementary. Within the overall architecture categories of components have been identified. The first of these are the Core components, these provide the essential services and functionality on which the other components are built. Next come the Common components, these provide widely used services such as file archiving, user management etc. The Core and Common components can effectively be thought of as middleware for the ground data systems. The third category, Custom components, consists of the applications that implement the end user needs. These map roughly onto subsystems, e.g. telemetry chain, telecommanding chain, onboard software maintenance system etc. Encapsulating the overall EGOS architecture is the Service Management Framework (SMF). This provides the mechanism through which the underlying systems expose services to external users and systems in a well defined and controlled manner. To avoid unnecessary dependencies between a set of rules has been prepared specifying whether the different categories of components may utilise the services provided by other components categories. * Head of the Ground Station Backend Section, OPS-GIB † Senior Software Engineer, Data System Infrastructure Division, OPS-GI ‡ Head of the Product Maintenance & Support Section, OPS-GIM § Head of the Operation Centre System Infrastructure Section, OPS-GIC ** Head of the Data System Infrastructure Division, OPS-GI

The CCSDS cross-support Space Link Extension (SLE) services standards have been adopted by the main space organizations during the last decade. This has created a global system of interoperability and currently, spacecrafts are supported by multiple space agencies providing telemetry to the ground and receiving telecommands from the Mission Control Centre via different SLE compliant ground segment systems (Mission Control systems, TM&TC providers, SLE gateways, etc.) belonging to different space organizations (e.g. ESA, NASA, CNES, DLR, ASI, JAXA, CNSA, INPE, ISRO, etc.). To ensure a correct inter-agency operability among these SLE systems, the execution of coordinated crosssupport SLE tests between the different space organizations is required. Sometimes, these tests are not successful due to misalignments in the SLE systems’ configurations, network anomalies and other unforeseen issues (e.g. software bugs), resulting in extra analysis and troubleshooting activities to be performed by the space agencies involved in the tests. These investigations can take a long time, since the SLE ground segment systems used by the different space agencies do not always provide meaningful SLE traces and logging capabilities. To overcome these issues, the European Space Operation Centre (ESOC) has developed a real-time CCSDS Space Link Extension (SLE) dissector based on the popular open source network sniffer “Wireshark”, that is able to detect, decode and dissect the SLE Protocol Data Units (PDU) that are exchanged via the return and forward SLE transfer services between two or more SLE compliant systems. This paper describes the motivation for creating the SLE dissector and it presents the benefits of using the SLE dissector for inter-agency cross-support operations with a practical example (SLE cross support tests between NASA and ESA for the provision of MAVEN telemetry to NASA’s Mission Control Centre via the ESTRACK’s SLE TM&TC providers located at ESA’s ground station in Perth). Finally, this paper proposes possible future applications of the SLE dissector in the field of operations and engineering.

World's largest space arena to be developed

Introduction The European Space Agency ‘s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) became ISO-9001 certified in 1999. For this purpose a quality management system (QMS) was prepared and is maintained and improved. QMS describes all the business processes at ESOC and in particular covers the complete lifecycle of the projects, from initial definition, to the space and ground segment implementation and operation, and encompasses all engineering and operational activities.

The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) is responsible for operating spacecraft covering a large range of mission types. These range from planetary probes/deep space missions through observatories and science missions to earth observation. All of these different types of missions have the need to plan operations on the spacecraft and, increasingly, of the ground segment. Typically the planning systems used to carry out this process have been implemented on a mission specific basis, at best utilizing some elements from a similar mission type. Reuse across different mission types has typically been almost non-existent. In order to increase synergy in the development of mission planning systems ESOC has started work to define a mission planning framework that can be used to build planning systems for any of the mission types operated. To do this it has been necessary to obtain input from the flight control teams of missions in operation and development. This has proved to be an interesting exercise as one of the main issues has been defining the terminology that was required. Whilst the terminology used amongst missions of the same type is similar it varies significantly between the mission types. This obviously adds considerably to the difficulty in trying to define a common approach to mission planning. To address this issue it was first necessary to define a set of terminology that was clear to all participants and could be used as the basis for defining a common concept. Once this has been done it then proved possible to identify a workflow that was largely applicable to most (although not all) missions. This workflow is as seen by the “planning team” part of a flight control team (FCT); no assumptions have been made as to whether the planning team is solely dedicated to planning activities, only that the planning is carried out as an FCT function.

Conventional satellite ground segments comprise mission operations and data acquisition systems, data ingestion interfaces, processing capabilities, a catalogue of available data, a data archive, and interfaces for queries and data dissemination. The transfer of data mostly relies on common computer networks or high capacity tapes. Future ground segments have to be capable of handling multi-mission data delivered by Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and optical sensors and have to provide easy user access to support the selection of specific data sets, fuse data, visualize products and to compress data for transmission via Internet. In particular, the search for data sets has to support individual queries by data content and detailed application area (“data mining”) as well as capabilities for automated extraction of relevant features and the application oriented representation of results. In the case of SAR image data, we face an enormous volume of raw data combined with very specific analysis requests posed by the users. In order to reconcile these conflicting aspects we suggest the development of a tool for interactive generation of high level products. This tool shall extract, evaluate, and visualize the significant information from multidimensional image data of geographically localized areas. It shall rely on advanced image compression methods. Thus, the tool will support the monitoring of the Earth’s surface from various perspectives like vegetation, ice and snow, or ocean features. This exchange of information can be understood as image communication, i.e. the transfer of information via visual data. We propose an advanced remote sensing ground segment architecture designed for easier and interactive decision-making applications and a broader dissemination of remote sensing data. This article presents the concept developed at the German Aerospace Center, DLR Oberpfaffenhofen in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, for information retrieval from remote sensing (RS) data. The research line has as very pragmatic goals the design of future RS ground segment systems permitting fast distribution and easy accessibility to the data, real and near real-time applications, and to promote the implementation of data distribution systems. However, the scope of the project is much larger, addressing basic problems of image and information representation, with a large potential of application in other fields: medical sciences, multimedia, interactive television, etc.

In 5G networks, the deployment of network slices enabled by Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is becoming a critical component for delivering tailored services to meet diverse application needs. However, this introduces challenges in network management, particularly in efficiently allocating resources to ensure that each network slice meets its specific Quality of Service (QoS) and availability requirements. Simultaneously, it must optimize overall network performance and network operator’s profit, which is linked to the Quality of Experience (QoE) of the end-users. Existing works offer either an availability-based solution or a QoE-aware solution to this problem, but not both. This paper addresses the end-to-end network slice resource allocation problem by simultaneously considering QoS and availability requirements in slice placement, while employing a QoE-aware strategy for resource allocation. We propose a framework that optimizes the network operator profit i.e. the highest QoE with the least resource usage, and can be flexibly configured to model realistic scenarios. Arbitrary network slice requirements can be defined using slice-specific QoS/QoE mapping, resource requirements, end-to-end latency and availability. For solving the formulated problem a Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) formulation and efficient heuristic methods are proposed. Our solution accounts for the non-linear QoS/QoE relationship, utilizes redundantly placed Service Function Chains (SFCs) to increase availability, and supports the sharing of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) among SFCs to optimize resource usage. Through extensive simulations on realistic network topologies and slice requests, we demonstrate the framework’s effectiveness in offering flexible and efficient network slice placement and resource allocation, utilizing a baseline heuristic from related studies. The results indicate that while the exact method delivers an optimal solution, heuristic approaches are suitable for time-sensitive tasks, such as dynamic slice configuration.

Rosetta mission operations for landing

BepiColombo is an interdisciplinary cornerstone mission to planet Mercury. It is a joint mission between ESA and JAXA consisting of 2 complementary spacecraft, the ESA Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the JAXA Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). The two spacecraft will be independently operated and controlled from the MPO Operations Ground Segment (OGS) located at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) and the MMO Operations Centre at ISAS/JAXA Sagamihara Space Operations Centre (SSOC). The science operations for MMO will be prepared by the MMO Science Operations Centre at SSOC while the MPO operations by the MPO Science Ground Segment (SGS), located at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) in Madrid, Spain. The BepiColombo MPO Science Ground Segment (SGS) combines the functionalities of a Science Operations Centre, covering the science operation planning and generation of consolidated payload command requests, and the science data handling and archiving tasks. BepiColombo’s MPO scientific payload comprises 11 instruments that will investigate the Mercury planet interior, surface composition and morphology, the intrinsic magnetic field and the composition of the exosphere and the coupling between all of these fields. The BepiColombo MPO has a large on board SSMM (Solid State Mass Memory) in order to store engineering and science data with a total capacity of 384 Gbit. The telemetry science data packets are stored in the SSMM packet stores based on Process Identifiers (PIDs). The instruments have been specified to generate lowand/or high-priority science data with different PIDs, such that this data can be stored in different packet stores. The BepiColombo MPO has two different radio frequency bands available for data return. The X-band channel is predictable in terms of planned data downlink and will be therefore used to return near real-time data needed on ground to check the spacecraft status/health and highpriority science data. In addition, a Ka-band downlink channel is available, where due to weather uncertainties larger data downlink latencies might arise. Thus, it is foreseen to return low-priority science data using the Kaband via file transfer with automatic retransmission of any lost packets. BepiColombo MPO has several downlink mechanisms in order to get the science data in an efficient way back to ground that combine the large

In this paper, we propose a joint power control and resource allocation approach for co-channel deployed high dense small-cells in macro-cell networks, denoted as Two-tier Optimized Resource and Power Allocation approach (TORPA). The ultimate goal of our contribution is to mitigate the co-tier and cross-tier interference faced by indoor and outdoor users in downlink communications and efficiently satisfy their resource requirements. With this in mind, we formulate the resulting optimization problem as a Mixed-Integer Linear Program (MILP) that aims to minimize the total transmit power and achieve an efficient two-tier physical resource allocation. Then, we propose a semi-centralized scheme to solve it. Extensive simulations show that TORPA can efficiently allocate power and distribute spectrum resources to both Small-cell Users (SUs) and Macro-Users (MUs) compared to the distributed resource allocation scheme and a prominent state of the art gametheoretic approach. In particular, TORPA improves the SU’s throughput by up to 9 times and 22% in comparison to these both schemes.

Next generation high data rate applications such as High-Definition (HD) video transmission place a heavy load on wireless network resources. To achieve the strict quality of service requirements of HD video in a multi-user network requires efficient resource allocation. Rate-distortion theory provides an appropriate basis for this. The Nash Bargaining Solution (NBS) is proven to generate an optimal solution to a rate-distortion based convex resource allocation problem. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is a meta-heuristic optimizer capable of generating near-optimal solutions. PSO, however, is not constrained to convex optimization problems. The motivation of this work is to demonstrate a PSO implementation capable of achieving an optimal solution to the resource allocation problem. The capability of the PSO approach to reach an optimal solution suggests its potential for resource allocation in a network of heterogeneous applications where convex optimization methods do not apply.

Cloud computing is one among the emerging platforms in business, IT enterprise and mobile computing applications. Resources like Software, CPU, Memory and I/O devices etc. are utilized and charged as per the usage, instead of buying it. A Proper and efficient resource allocation in this dynamic cloud environment becomes the challenging task due to drastic increment in cloud usage. Various promising technologies have been developed to improve the efficiency of resource allocation process. But still there is some incompetency in terms of task scheduling and power consumption, when the system gets overloaded. So an energy efficient task scheduling algorithm is required to improve the efficiency of resource allocation process. In this paper an improved task scheduling and an optimal power minimization approach is proposed for efficient dynamic resource allocation process. Using prediction mechanism and dynamic resource table updating algorithm, efficiency of resource allocation in terms of task completion and response time is achieved. This framework brings an efficient result in terms of power reduction since it reduces the power consumption in data centers. The proposed approach gives accurate values for updating resource table. An efficient resource allocation is achieved by an improved task scheduling technique and reduced power consumption approach. The Simulation result gives 8% better results when comparing to other existing methods.

Reasonable allocation of art teaching resources can improve the management efficiency of art teaching resources. There is a large delay in the allocation of art teaching resources, which leads to the long occupation time of network resource allocation channel. The traditional method of network experiment resource allocation is to assign resource tasks for different channels to complete the resource allocation. When the network resource allocation channel occupies a long time, the allocation efficiency is reduced. This paper proposes an optimal allocation method of art teaching resources based on multi rate cognition. From the point of view that there are a pair of primary users and a pair of secondary users in the network, this method constructs a resource allocation delay model, obtains the resource allocation delay under different modes, and dynamically adjusts the transmission rate on the allocation resource block. The art teaching resource allocation scheduling problem is modeled as a nonlinear optimization problem, and the constraints of the optimization problem are given, which are integrated into greedy computing. The global optimal solution of the problem is carried out by using the method, and the allocation of art teaching resources is completed. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm greatly improves the efficiency and effect of teaching network resource allocation.

Paper describes deployment of ENVIRO System used for obtaining geospatial data for forest monitoring and improving forest anagement. Two main parts of ENVIRO system – Aerial segment and ground segment are described based of their construction and installation. Paper also describes functionality of the system in terms of data collection, processing and evaluation using ENVIRO System solution in real life deployment.

The fifth generation (5G) mobile communication system is regard as a key enabler in promoting the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT), which is accompanied by the increasing service demands such like high data rate, enormous connection, and low latency. To meet these demands, network slicing has been envisioned as an efficient technology to customize infrastructures and allocate resources for 5G IoT services. However, due to various application backgrounds and ubiquitous social interactions of IoT services, the heterogeneous and social-driven resource requirement of users should be carefully assessed in resource allocation for the sliced 5G wireless network. In this paper, a novel nature-inspired wireless resource allocation scheme with slice characteristic perception is proposed, which comprehensively analyzes the properties of slices and converts them into a network profit model of resource utilization. Specifically, personalized service preferences and evolutionary interest relationships of users are exploited to model the complex and dynamic network environment with cellular automaton, and a biologically inspired allocation strategy of virtual wireless resource is proposed on the requirements of continuously updated user groups. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves favorable resource utilization and low computational complexity, which favors the dynamic IoT slicing architecture and improves the efficiency and flexibility of resource allocation.