High Performance Embedded Computing in Space: Evaluation of Platforms for Vision-based Navigation George Lentarisa, Konstantinos Maragosa, Ioannis Stratakosa, Lazaros Papadopoulosa, Odysseas Papanikolaoua and Dimitrios Soudrisb National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece Manolis Lourakisc and Xenophon Zabulisc Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas, POB 1385, 71110 Heraklion, Greece David Gonzalez-Arjonad GMV Aerospace & Defence SAU, Tres Cantos, 28760 Madrid, Spain Gianluca Furanoe European Space Agency, European Space Technology Centre, Keplerlaan 1 2201AZ Noordwijk, The Netherlands Vision-based navigation has become increasingly important in a variety of space ap- plications for enhancing autonomy and dependability. Future missions, such as active debris removal for remediating the low Earth orbit environment, will rely on novel high-performance avionics to support advanced image processing algorithms with sub- stantial workloads. However, when designing new avionics architectures, constraints relating to the use of electronics in space present great challenges, further exacerbated by the need for significantly faster processing compared to conventional space-grade central processing units. With the long-term goal of designing high-performance em- bedded computers for space, in this paper, an extended study and trade-off analysis of a diverse set of computing platforms and architectures (i.e., central processing units, a Research Associate, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NTUA, Athens.
[email protected] b Associate Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NTUA, Athens.
[email protected] c Principal Researcher, Institute of Computer Science, FORTH, Heraklion.
[email protected] d Avionics and On-Board Software Engineer, GMV, Madrid. e On-Board Computer Engineer, Microelectronics & Data Systems Division, ESA ESTEC, Noordwijk.