Fault Tolerant Software-Defined Radio on Manycore

Mobile communications systems require programmable embedded platforms that can handle computationally demanding signal processing codes without the burden of high power consumption. As hardware performance improves, technology trends have shifted functionality from the gate level up to software, as demonstrated by the emergence of software defined radio. Traditionally, these platforms rely on FPGAs and DSPs, but such architectures bring with them significant software development challenges. Application demands for radiation mitigation and fault tolerance exacerbate programmability issues. Low-power general purpose processors offer improved programmability, but cannot meet performance requirements. Our solution, Resilient, provides a sweet spot with its manycore-based software defined radio. Resilient is a software defined radio for space based on rad-hard multi-core digital processing. Resilient has a number of key characteristics and capabilities. Firstly, it is based on the Maestro rad-hard multicore processor. Maestro will provide about 100 times the throughput of the current state of the art in rad-hard general purpose processors. Secondly, Resilient is a highly flexible radio, providing uninterrupted real time multimode operation, over-the-air reconfiguration and adaptability, and STRS compliance. It can also serve as a highly programmable research stage prototyping device for new waveforms and other communications technologies. Finally, Resilient can also support non-communications codes on its high performance multicore processor, co-located with the communications workload, reducing the SWaP of the overall system by aggregating processing jobs to a single board computer.

The applicability of Resilient is not limited to NASA markets. Military SATCOM is a primary target DoD market for Resilient. Satellite-based surveillance applications also stand to benefit from Resilient not just for communications but also to support data and image processing workloads. Aggregating communications and non-communications tasks on a single hardware component reduces SWaP and the complexity of the overall system. Commercial communications applications also are pushing for more programmability. Examples include basestations, femtocells, automotive wireless devices, and smart phones. Additionally, the rad-hard characteristics of Resilient make nuclear applications an attractive market.

Resilient is Maxentric's radiation hardened multicore-based software defined radio. Resilient will improve the flexibility of NASA communications hardware while reducing SWaP. Maxentric is targeting NASA software radio programs such as CoNNeCT (Communication Navigation and Networking Reconfigurable Testbed), as well as space applications where flexible rad-hard computing would provide significant value such as multimode rover communications and data processing. Satellite communication is another target NASA application for Resilient. Also, Resilient can serve as a flexible research platform for NASA communications labs and research projects because of its ability to provide a fully programmable network stack from the physical layer up to the application.

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