Ensuring Cybersecure Telemetry and Telecommand in Small Satellites: Recent Trends and Empirical Propositions

With the advent of a large number of small satellites in the orbit performing critical missions, securing ground/space infrastructure against cyberattacks has become a blazing issue amongst operators and policymakers. In this paper, we provide up-to-date analysis on the recent advances, existing, and future trends in small satellite cybersecurity, considering the advent of new policies and architectures, implementation of modern cryptographic algorithms, and prospects of quantum cryptographic techniques. We explore the performance of selected encryption schemes in the cyberphysical space of small satellites, using throughput, memory footprint, security, and energy consumption as key performance metrics. We propose an open-source cybersecurity analysis platform in the context of small satellites and have found out that the 128 bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is most suitable for securing small satellite telemetry/telecommand channel. We have also investigated possibilities of telemetry compression, proposing a modified Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems telemetry/telecommand packet format to incorporate compression and encryption, and have found simple Huffman coding to be suitable. In order to improve the resilience of ground infrastructure against cyberattacks, a redundant array of ground station elements is recommended to be architected.