Studying service oriented concepts to cope with future complex mission scenarios and develop= a proof of concept aiming at reducing the Monitoring Control (MC) tailoring effort for the ESA/ESTRACK Ground Stations.

 

In order to perform the MC configuration of a ground station for supporting a spacecraft, a number of software systems and specialized devices (telemetry and telecommand processors, signal encoders and decoders, switches, amplifiers, frequency converters) must be configured, ensuring data communications between the ground and the spacecraft. While the execution of the configuration is done from the runtime MC system (also called the Station Manager), the preparation of the configuration is done via a specialized configuration (tailoring) system, which is a tool for station engineers used to customize the station manager for a specific ground station. With the tailoring system, engineers construct a model of the station via a graphical user interface and prepare the required information that the station manager requires. The tailoring system not only describes the station, but also contains specifications for i) the presentation of the station on the operator user interface including diagrams, tabular displays and menus for control ii) operation of the station interactively via the operator user interface and iii) automation procedures in order to configure the ground station automatically for a given spacecraft.

 

The tailoring process of each ground station takes considerable effort and this activity aims at optimizing this process, reducing the tailoring effort and making the tailoring system more efficient. In addition, the activity aims to identify a concrete concept for configuring resource allocation and sharing, in support of automatically configuring a given ground station for supporting multiple spacecraft simultaneously. The goal of the activity is to produce usable outputs and concepts for any potential future ground station MC system. The tasks of the proposed activity include i) analysis of day-to-day tailoring work and identification of problematic areas ii) analysis of pre-identified inefficient areas iii) development of a service oriented concept for resource allocation and configuration and iv) the production of the relevant technical notes addressing the abovementioned areas.

 

The activity will implement a beta version of the tailoring system, including the complete software functionality, using the newly defined concepts and improvements