| System analysis: Failure Detection, Isolation and Recovery |
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As there is not always the possibility for the Flying Laptop to have contact to the ground, it is essentiell for the small satellite to be able to handle failures and malfunction autonomous. Otherwise we would face the danger of losing the complete mission. Therefore a system analysis needs to be performed to identify possible failure sources and judge there impact on the system function. This includes the influence of the environmental conditions of space as well as user or developer injected errors. In an ideal case some failure sources can be identified and eliminated completely during the development. But this will not be possible for the complete system. Therefore the remaining errors need to be identified and according reactions need to be found. This reaction might range from just sending a device command a second time to switch from a nominal to the according redundant device on to apply a mode-switch for the complete satellite into Safemode to reduce energy consumption. The system analysis is still at the beginning so there's a lot of ground to cover which offers a wide range of applicable theses for diploma or bachelor/master students.For the handling of software exceptions and failures it would be good to have experience with C/C++ or any similar high-level programming language. But for a system analysis of the satellite this is not absolutely necessary. However you should be comforted with the English language written and spoken as our documentation as well as much of literature is held in English. Maybe the most important thing is the ability to work team-oriented as you will need to get in contact with all the subsystem consignants during your work. For more information or if you are interested in writing your thesis in this part of the small satellite development please feel free to contact Rouven Witt. |