Novel wireless protocol architecture for intra-spacecraft wireless sensor networks (inspaWSN)

This paper presents a novel wireless protocol architecture for intra-spacecraft networks (inspaWSN), which makes use of the impulse-ultra wideband and an optimized low-latency and deterministic network protocol in order to achieve the strict requirements on existing spacecraft networks, e.g. the attitude and orbit control system (AOCS). The nodes in such a network configuration consist of different actuators and sensors, which have to be controlled and readout in a deterministic manner with latencies below 10ms. The implementation and evaluation of the inspaWSN is performed on an STM32 microcontroller network consisting of 3 nodes. The results show that it is able to fulfill the strict timing requirements in order to accomplish a deterministic communication with a latency of 10 ms and less in a typical AOCS configuration.