The Configurable Fault Tolerant Processor (CFTP), developed by the Space Systems Academic Group at the

Naval Postgraduate School Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is a Naval command with a graduate university mission, operated by the United States Navy and located in Monterey, California. The NPS mission is to provide "defense-focused graduate education, including clas ...

, is an experimental payload on board the

United States Naval Academy The United States Naval Academy (USNA, Navy, or Annapolis) is a United States Service academies, federal service academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was established on 10 October 1845 during the tenure of George Bancroft as United States Secre ...

's (USNA) MidSTAR-1 satellite. Midstar-1 was launched into a 492km

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

(LEO) on March 8, 2007, aboard an

Atlas V Atlas V is an expendable launch system and the fifth major version in the Atlas (rocket family), Atlas launch vehicle family. It was developed by Lockheed Martin and has been operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA) since 2006. Primarily used to ...

expendable launch vehicle An expendable launch system (or expendable launch vehicle/ELV) is a launch vehicle that can be launched only once, after which its components are destroyed during reentry or impact with Earth, or discarded in space. ELVs typically consist of s ...

from

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the sta ...

, along with FalconSat 3, STPSat 1, and CFESat as secondary payloads. The primary payload was

Orbital Express Orbital Express: ASTRO and NEXTSat Orbital Express was a space mission managed by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and a team led by engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The Orbital Express p ...

CFTP Purpose

The Configurable Fault Tolerant Processor Project aims to demonstrate the feasibility of using

Field Programmable Gate Array A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is a type of configurable integrated circuit that can be repeatedly programmed after manufacturing. FPGAs are a subset of logic devices referred to as programmable logic devices (PLDs). They consist of ...

s (FPGAs) for spacecraft computer processing by applying various fault tolerance techniques to the designs. CFTP provides a valuable testbed for on-orbit evaluation of various fault tolerant concepts. The use of FPGAs provides added flexibility, allowing on-orbit upgrades and rapid development cycles. Using Commercial off the shelf (COTS) technology allows the engineer to produce more technologically advanced designs at a lower cost and in a shorter time than using more traditional space-grade components. Space-based FPGA design also provides the Naval Postgraduate School students with unique challenges in developing for and configuring the system. Remotely accessing the platform over a limited downlink and uplink provides challenges not seen on ground-based systems.

CFTP Versions

CFTP-1

The CFTP-1 board utilizes

Xilinx Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company is renowned for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA). It also pioneered ...

Virtex I parts for both the control and experiment FPGAs. The complete CFTP payload, as delivered to MidSTAR-1, consists of the CFTP board itself (shown in the spacecraft image above), an ARM processor board that communicates with the control FPGA on the CFTP board through a PC/104 bus, and a power supply board. The ARM processor board communicates with the spacecraft's Command and Data Handler (C&DH) computer through a serial PPP link. CFTP-1 underwent radiation testing at the UC Davis' cyclotron facility prior to integration with the MidSTAR satellite.

CFTP-2

The CFTP-2 system is currently an entirely ground based system. The CFTP-2 board itself is set up nearly identically to the CFTP-1 board, however it utilizes a

Virtex 2 part as the experiment FPGA, rather than the Xilinx Virtex I part on CFTP-1. This system was tested in a proton beam using the University of California at Davis' cyclotron.

References

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