FPAA Based Bandwidth Recovery in Satellite Subsystems via Intrinsic Evolution

In recent years, satellite communication has gained increased prominence and new design techniques have emerged. However, system reliability still remains the prime consideration. The onboard control system components of the satellite are subjected to high temperature, shock and vibration both during initial transport and launch, and also during periodical orbital corrections. These effects can introduce faults in the control systems mounted on the space vehicle. Providing redundant hardware is a common method of recovering from faults, but this method is not feasible since it increases both space and weight, which is totally undesirable in space vehicles. An alternative approach of fault recovery is to perform reconfiguration of existing circuitry. This work focuses on reconfigurable hardware based fault recovery for analog linear feedback control systems using field programmable analog arrays (FPAA). The fault recovery scheme is developed generic by considering the faulty system as a black box with no access to its interior for repair or replacement of failed components and is applicable for both closed loop and open loop systems.