Design and implementation of a low-cost fault-tolerant on-board computer for micro-satellite

In recent years, as an important frontier of astronautics, micro-satellites have been widely used for various space-oriented missions. During various on-board components, the on-board computer (OBC) is essential to take charge of many tasks such as command and data handing, communication and payload management. However, the resources on micro-satellites are so limited that the OBC should not only meet the requirements of excellent performance and high reliability, but also be in proper power consumption and cost. The purpose of this paper is to present a solution for developing a low-cost, low power consumption and reliable OBC system for micro-satellites. The proposed system is based on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components and Linux operating system. Besides, considering the harsh space environment, a set of fault tolerant strategies are introduced to improve the reliability of the OBC. Finally, the analysis and test results are provided to illustrate the relatively low-cost, low power consumption and high reliability of the proposed OBC system.