**Abstract**

The continuous development of space missions has put forward requirements for high performance, high reliability, intelligence, effective integration, miniaturization, and quick turn around productization of the electronic system of satellites. The complexity of satellites has continued to increase, and the focus of satellite competition has shifted from the launch of success shifts to communication capacity, performance indicators, degree of flexibility, and continuous service capabilities. So, the importance of onboard avionics system is becoming increasingly prominent. In the future, the advanced avionics system integrates most of the platform's electronic equipment. The design level of the system largely determines the performance of the satellite platform. This chapter focuses on the application requirements of the new generation of intelligent avionics system for future communication satellites and adopts an "open" architecture of "centralized management, distributed measurement and drive, and software and hardware 'modular' design" to build a universal, standardized, and scalable intelligent avionics system.

**Keywords:** satellite, avionics system, intelligent, open architecture, modular design, centralized management, reliability

### **1. Introduction**

With the continuous advancement of electronics and computer technology, the functions and performance of spacecraft avionics system have also continuously improved, covering functions such as spacecraft remote measurement and remote management, energy management, thermal management, health management, payload information processing, and mission task management. Avionics system plays a core role in the realization of information sharing and comprehensive utilization, function integration, resource reorganization and optimization, and information processing and transmission [1]. It is the foundation for spacecraft to implement autonomous management and control and is also a bridge for communication management from a spacecraft to other spacecrafts and ground station [2].

The traditional spacecraft electronic system uses a layered centralized management control mode similar to a pyramid. It not only needs a large amount of data interaction between the management unit and the interface unit but also requires the management unit to process a large amount of underlying data, which makes the management unit overwhelmed. It severely limits the processing and support of high-level tasks by electronic systems. Moreover, the management unit is at the top of the "pyramid" of centralized management, which requires high reliability. Once

a failure occurs, the entire electronic system will fail. Thus, the centralized management method is no longer suitable for the needs of spacecraft development.

The satellite intelligent avionics system is an information processing and transmission system that uses computer network technology to interconnect satelliteborne electronic equipment on the satellite to achieve internal information sharing and comprehensive utilization, function integration, and resource reorganization and optimization. Utilizing onboard computers to complete satellite data management, control management, communication management, time management, energy management, and job management functions through unified scheduling of satellite missions. Its essence is the generation, identification, processing, analysis, transmission, and distribution of information process. The integrated satellite electronic system integrates the functions of the satellite platform electronic equipment, and its design level directly determines the performance of the satellite platform [3–5].

At present, satellite sub-systems mostly adopt independent design schemes, which decentralize satellite attitude control, propulsion control, thermal control, satellite-ground link communication, and power control functions. The onboard computer is responsible for tasks such as remote control, telemetry, programcontrolled operation, thermal control, and time management. The attitude and orbit control computer are responsible for attitude and orbit (including propulsion control) control. Each sub-system such as power supply, thermal control, and digital transmission is equipped with corresponding lower-level computers responsible for telemetry acquisition and remote control of the respective sub-system. However, the satellite system designed using this approach is usually resulting in heavy weight, high power consumption, large volume (aka high size, weight, and power (SWAP)), complex interface relationships, weak system reconfiguration capabilities, and low functional density. In order to overcome the abovementioned shortcomings and make the satellite avionics system better meet the SWAP and flexible system configuration requirements of future missions, it is necessary to improve its design technology, that is, from the current independent design of each sub-system to the open and modular design of the entire satellite. Based on the principle of unified application, deployment and operation of hardware resources, and the full use of the various functions of the software, the information sharing of the entire satellite, simple system configuration, and overall performance optimization are realized.

This chapter focuses on the application requirements of the new generation of intelligent avionics system for future communication satellites, and adopts an open architecture of "centralized management, distributed measurement and drive, and software and hardware modular design." The universal, standardized, and scalable intelligent avionics system is built based on the basic modular elements of open hardware modules, open software components, and industry standardized internal and external busses.

#### **2. System structure**

This section introduces the intelligent open system architecture, including Sections 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4. Section 2.1 introduces the overall architecture design; the system adopts the distributed design mode and completes the intelligent management of onboard tasks through the menu hardware architecture and open interface protocol. Section 2.2 discusses the hardware architecture of high-performance computing and introduces the onboard high-performance computing and the corresponding storage capacity from the main functions,

*Design of Intelligent and Open Avionics System Onboard DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93141*

processing, storage, and radiation resistance. Section 2.3 describes the dynamic state reconfigurable task scheduling that improves the fault tolerance ability of the satellite network in view of the typical scenarios of the satellite integrated electronic system in the operation process. Section 2.4 discusses the design of software partition protection mechanism related to the next-generation avionics system and analyzes the requirements, design, and functions of partition protection, aiming to improve the robustness of the software system.
