A Fault-Tolerant Attitude Determination System Based on COTS Devices

In this paper we present a low cost fault-tolerant attitude determination system to a scientific satellite using COTS devices. We related our experience in developing the attitude determination system, where we combine proven fault tolerance techniques to protect the whole system composed only by COTS from the effects produced by transient faults. We detailed the failure cases and the detection, reconfiguration and recovery schemes that assure the fault-tolerant condition. A testbed system was used to inject faults, evaluate the recovery capability of the fault-tolerant system and validate the solution proposed.