Integrated embedded architectures and parallel algorithms for a decentralized control system

Control of complex, flexible structures requires substantial amounts of computational power to achieve precision performance in both space and time. This is due to the fact that such structures are inherently multiple input, multiple output systems whose complexities increase significantly with each additional input or output parameter. The other design difficulty is due to the requirement of realtime computation and data communication since such systems have to be controlled on the fly. Thus, general purpose computer architectures are simply insufficient in this scenario. This paper introduces the development of an embedded computing system that supports the implementation of control algorithms on a segmented reflector telescope testbed. Decentralized algorithms have been recognized and proven to provide promising performance of control, and are being used for primary mirror shaping and precision pointing control of this testbed. The system architecture of the testbed is featured with a suite of interconnected signal processors and high performance I/O devices to meet the computational requirements, and hence, allows real-time performance of the control algorithms. The system also supports fault-tolerance during processor failure or recovery by leveraging the technologies of decentralized control with its associative pipelined task mapping mechanism