#LINK BETWEEN WORLDS RUNNING CHALLENGE VERIFICATION#
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#LINK BETWEEN WORLDS RUNNING CHALLENGE CODE#
#LINK BETWEEN WORLDS RUNNING CHALLENGE PC#

The telescope pointing control system enabled Astrium to demonstrate the world’s first two-way laser optical link between an airborne aircraft and a communications satellite.ĭesign iterations reduced from days to hours. Resultsįirst-of-its-kind optical link demonstrated.

#LINK BETWEEN WORLDS RUNNING CHALLENGE PC#

The engineers used Simulink Real-Time™ to deploy a fully functional, real-time version of the system on a PC designed for flight tests. “These functions were easily embedded into S-functions in the Simulink model,” explains Gendre.

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Throughout development, MathWorks tools facilitated concurrent engineering, with software engineers in charge of managing the real-time constraints of the control system as well as developing functions such as image processing and specific hardware drivers. They then conducted a second, avionic validation phase using HIL tests, with the control system operating on a combination of actual hardware (for the fine-control pointing) and simulated hardware (for the larger-scale pointing).

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They used Control System Toolbox™ to develop linear time-invariant models and reused functional blocks from their Simulink library, including blocks for orbit models and geometric analysis using quaternion computations.Īfter running time- and frequency-domain simulations in Simulink to verify the functionality and stability of the control system, the engineers used Simulink Coder™ to generate code for the control software and the physical model. Using Simulink, engineers developed components for each control-system operating mode, including pointing, acquisition, and tracking. The Simulink models enabled the teams to communicate design decisions throughout development. They divided the project into two parallel efforts, with one group using Simulink ® to design and model the control system and a second using Simulink to model the mechanics of the telescope pointing hardware and the behavior of the active pixel sensor. MATLAB ® and Optimization Toolbox™ were used to process the measurement data as input to the control system model.

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We used these models for continuous functional verification and to generate code for hardware-in-the-loop tests and the real-time demonstration system used in flight tests.' ChallengeĪstrium engineers used MathWorks tools for Model-Based Design to model, simulate, and verify the control algorithms and telescope pointing hardware conduct hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) tests and deploy a fully operational, real-time system for flight tests.Īstrium conducted flight tests to measure vibration in the aircraft and pitch, roll, and yaw angle variations. 'On this project, we used Simulink, Simulink Coder, and Simulink Real-Time to develop a control system model and a physical model of the pointing hardware. 'We use Model-Based Design regularly for timed simulations and modeling spacecraft dynamics,' explains David Gendre, pointing development engineer at Astrium. To establish such a link with an aircraft, engineers had to contend with the distortion and attenuation of the signal by the atmosphere and by the movement and vibrations of the aircraft.Īstrium, a wholly owned subsidiary of EADS, developed LOLA, a two-way laser optical link between an airborne aircraft and the Artemis geostationary satellite capable of 50 megabits-per-second transmission with an error rate of less than one error bit per billion.Īstrium reduced control development and validation time by using MathWorks tools for Model-Based Design, an approach that was already well-established within the organization. Until recently, laser optical links for high-bandwidth satellite transmissions were limited to satellite-to-satellite communication.

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