Edward R. Prado

The cots conundrum

corn Abstract - The use of COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) in signal and data processing technologies for use in space and airborne applications has been a topic of much review and discussion. Clearly, there are many benefits to using COTS however, there are also many potential pitfalls for the unwary user. This paper identifies some of the pitfalls that one must understand and potentially overcome in order to use COTS successfully. Issues considered are performance in radiation environments, cost, and rapid pace of COTS compared to long development cycles for space-based systems, etc. Some of these COTS issues are particularly acute in space applications. The understanding and handling of COTS vulnerabilities can lead to successful use of COTS in space and airborne applications if proper consideration is addressed early in the development cycle.

A standard product approach to spaceborne payload processing

A scalable, reprogrammable, highly modular general-purpose payload architecture is presented for space applications. Based on COTS standards and components, the approach presented represents a highly efficient coupling between general purpose DSP elements and payload control solutions. The proposed payload architecture and functional partition provides the spacecraft systems integrator a powerful set of COTS based solutions previously not available to the space community.