Speaker
Description
In space applications, firmware updates play a crucial role, ensuring that payloads in orbit can acquire new functionalities or rectify logical errors. Stable and efficient updates are essential. Concurrently, high-energy charged particles in space can affect electronic components. Single Event Upsets (SEUs) may alter the logic state of digital circuits. If an SEU occurs in the FLASH storing the firmware, it could potentially impact payload operations.
We've engineered a firmware update method tailored for commercial-grade FLASH: issuing update commands via the CAN 2.0 bus, transmitting firmware data through Ethernet, ensuring accuracy with CRC-32 and ECC verification during transmission and FLASH writing, and featuring data retransmission capability. Additionally, a backup firmware in FLASH guarantees update retries upon failure. Using Xilinx's XC7K70T, updates conclude within 2 minutes, ensuring data accuracy. Addressing potential single-event upsets affecting FLASH integrity, we routinely extract firmware data and compute 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit checksums in orbit. Ground simulations confirm the effectiveness of these checksums in verifying data integrity.
The Cosmic X-ray Polarization Detector (CXPD) is designed as a highly sensitive soft X-ray polarimeter carried by a CubeSat, capable of measuring energy within the range of 2 to 10 kilo-electron volts. Its electronic system (CXPDES) not only enables on-orbit telemetry, telecommand, and data transmission but also boasts the ability to conduct on-orbit firmware updates. Through ground testing, we performed firmware updates over a hundred times without encountering any update errors. Currently, the CXPDES has been operational in orbit for 175 days and has successfully completed one firmware update.
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| IEEE Member | No |
| Are you a student? | Yes |
