Ground Stations systems laboratory

Since 2000, TCPsi signed an agreement with ESA to maintain a laboratory in our dependencies aiming at express development, test and simulation activities of critical management systems for satellite tracking ground stations. The fundamental objective is to contribute with reliable and adaptative solutions in this ambit: task execution in real-time, high-level mission planning, task scheduling, integral management of the whole station, supervision of power plants and other infrastructures...

The Laboratory is composed of specific ESA hardware components:

• Industrial PC for 19” crates for robust performance

• Specific devices for time synchronization (NTP servers, Time Code Generators, Pulse Code Generators...)

• Interface devices for bus communication simulation (InterBus, GPI-B, Modbus, serial buses...)

• Dedicated communication devices for network performance and balance tests

The research activities are focused on simulating a whole ground station including simulators of real devices. This test benchmark provides an excellent environment for functional verification, validation in real-time and performance assessment.