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Christian M. Fuchs

Christian M. Fuchs

PhD (Interdisciplinary); MSc (Space Engineering + CE); BScE (IT Security)

About

32
Publications
25,070
Reads
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188
Citations
Additional affiliations
March 2019 - June 2019
National Tsing Hua University
Position
  • Researcher
Description
  • Worked with a student team in developing a SystemC/ArchC model of my fault-tolerant MPSoC for fault-injection. Collaboration with several researchers in the NTHU computer science and electrical engineering departments, as well as astronomy.
July 2016 - December 2019
Leiden University
Position
  • Researcher
Description
  • Conceptualization, design, implementation and verification of a fault-tolerant computer architecture for spacecraft. Co-designed a compartmentalized, reconfigurable MPSoC platform and software-implemented fault-tolerance measures. Supports graceful aging.
June 2013 - December 2015
Technische Universität München
Position
  • Researcher
Description
  • On-orbit operations and post-mortem work on the CubeSat FirstMOVE. OBC team leader of the MOVE-II CubeSat mission. Contributed to obtaining funding for MOVE-II from the German Space Agency (DLR).

Publications

Publications (32)
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In this contribution we present practical experiences from realizing a prototype of the first truly fault-tolerant and autonomously operating avionics suite for miniaturized satellite down to the size of a 2U CubeSat. Our initial demonstrator setup consists of a mix of COTS parts and FPGA development boards, which we gradually expanded in scope and...
Thesis
Full-text available
Miniaturized satellites enable a variety space missions which were in the past infeasible, impractical or uneconomical with traditionally-designed heavier spacecraft. Especially CubeSats can be launched and manufactured rapidly at low cost from commercial components, even in academic environments. However, due to their low reliability and brief lif...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Miniaturized satellites are currently not considered suitable for critical, high-priority, and complex multi-phased missions, due to their low reliability. As hardware-side fault tolerance (FT) solutions designed for larger spacecraft can not be adopted aboard very small satellites due to budget, energy, and size constraints, we developed a hybrid...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In this contribution, we present a CubeSat-compatible on-board computer (OBC) architecture that offers strong fault tolerance to enable the use of such spacecraft in critical and long-term missions. We describe in detail the design of our OBC's breadboard setup, and document its composition from the component-level, all the way down to the software...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
We present the implementation of a fault-tolerant MPSoC for very small satellites (<100kg) based upon commercial components and library IP. This MPSoC is the result of a co-design process and is designed as ideal platform for software-implemented fault-tolerance measures. It enforces strong isolation between processors, and combines fault-tolerance...
Poster
Full-text available
We developed the first truly fault-tolerant and autonomously operating, decentralized satellite backbone and avionics suite for miniaturized satellites down to the size of 2U CubeSats. We developed this technology from the ground up: the idea for this technology emerged, when the first CubeSat we worked on as students failed on-orbit. This idea is...
Preprint
Full-text available
Fault-tolerant system architectures for space applications are currently validated using system-level testing. This is viable for systems relying on hardware measures, but unsuitable for fault tolerance (FT) implemented in software. Fault injection using a realistic test-setup is considered good practice to validate software, but also challenging....
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In this contribution, we provide insights on the practical feasibility, effectiveness, and validation of a software-based fault-tolerance architecture we developed for use aboard small satellites. We exploit thread-level coarse-grain lockstep to facilitate forward-error-correction and assures computational correctness on an FPGA-based MPSoC. It can...
Poster
Full-text available
(Poster) In this contribution, we provide insights on the practical feasibility, effectiveness, and validation of a software-based fault-tolerance architecture we developed for use aboard small satellites. We exploit thread-level coarse-grain lockstep to facilitate forward-error-correction and assures computational correctness on an FPGA-based MPSo...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper proposes a LEO relay constellation formed by a ring of nanosatellites utilizing S-Band for data relay and UHF/VHF and S-Band for user communication. It is feasible with existing CubeSat hardware, and provides communication relay links to satellites from 495km to 850 km of altitude. By providing service to nanosatellites with a CubeSat-ba...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Modern embedded and mobile-market processor technology is a cornerstone of miniaturized satellite design. This type of lighter, cheaper, and rapidly developed spacecraft has enabled a variety of new commercial and scientific missions. However micro- and nanosatellites (<100kg) currently are not considered suitable for critical, high-priority, and c...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Micro- and nanosatellites have become popular platforms for a variety of commercial and scientific applications, but today are considered suitable mainly for short and low-priority space missions due to their low reliability. In part, this can be attributed to their reliance upon cheap, low-feature size, COTS components originally designed for embe...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Modern embedded technology is a driving factor in satellite miniaturization, contributing to a massive boom in satellite launches and a rapidly evolving new space industry. Miniaturized satellites however suffer from low reliability, as traditional hardware-based fault-tolerance (FT) concepts are ineffective for on-board computers (OBCs) utilizing...
Conference Paper
Micro- and nanosatellites have become popular platforms for a variety of scientific applications, but are constrained to short and low-priority missions due to their reliability. In part, this can be attributed to their reliance upon cheap, highly-scaled, consumer-grade on-board computer (OBC) components. Most recent miniaturized satellites utilize...
Article
Full-text available
Modern embedded technology is a driving factor in satellite miniaturization, contributing to a massive boom in satellite launches and a rapidly evolving new space industry. Miniaturized satellites, however, suffer from low reliability, as traditional hardware-based fault-tolerance (FT) concepts are ineffective for on-board computers (OBCs) utilizin...
Article
Full-text available
Modern embedded technology is a driving factor in satellite miniaturization, contributing to a massive boom in satellite launches and a rapidly evolving new space industry. Miniaturized satellites however suffer from low reliability, as traditional hardware-based fault-tolerance (FT) concepts are ineffective for on-board computers (OBCs) utilizing...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Despite being versatile and efficient for various use cases, nano-and microsatellites are still plagued by low dependability. The low survivability of many earlier CubeSat missions can be attributed, among others, to low component level failure tolerance and a lack of FDIR functionality. Most nanosatellite developers underestimate the required test...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
We present storage integrity concepts developed for the CubeSat MOVE-II over the past two years, enabling dependable computing without relying solely upon hardened special purpose hardware. Neither component level, nor hardware-or software-side measures individually can guarantee sufficient system consistency with modern highly scaled components. I...
Article
Full-text available
Context. Historically, due to instrumental limitations and a lack of disk detections, the structure of the transition from the envelope to the rotationally supported disk has been poorly studied. This is now possible with ALMA through observations of CO isotopologues and tracers of freezeout. Class 0 sources are ideal for such studies given their a...
Article
Full-text available
Due to instrumental limitations and a lack of disk detections, the structure between the envelope and the rotationally supported disk has been poorly studied. This is now possible with ALMA through observations of CO isotopologs and tracers of freezeout. Class 0 sources are ideal for such studies given their almost intact envelope and young disk. T...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Future spacemissions will require vast amounts of data to be stored and processed aboard spacecraft. While satisfying operational mission requirements, storage systems must guarantee data integrity and recover damaged data throughout the mission. NAND-flash memories have become popular for space-borne high performance mass memory scenarios, though...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper presents the on-orbit results and the lessons learned from First-MOVE (Munich Orbital Verification Experiment), the first CubeSat mission of the Institute of Astronautics (LRT) at the Technische Universität München (TUM). The development of the satellite started as a student project in 2006. First-MOVE was launched on November 21st 2013....
Conference Paper
Full-text available
A satellite’s on-board computer must guarantee integrity and recover degraded or damaged data over the entire duration of the spacecraft’s mission in an extreme, radiated environment. While redundancy and hardware-side voting can protect Magnetoresistive RAM well from device failure, more sophisticated software-side storage concepts are required if...

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