Design of microcontroller software for a satellite-based ferroelectric capacitor experiment

Abstract

The Naval Postgraduate School's Space Systems Academic Group is developing a satellite-based experiment to evaluate the electrical properties of ferroelectric capacitors under high levels of ionizing particle radiation. The experiment, called FERRO, is one of three experiments that comprise the APEX mission. The Apex mission is sponsored by the joint Space Test Program and will be launched early in 1992. The main processor for FERRO is an Intel 80C196KB 16-bit embedded controller that will perform all aspects of experiment control, data acquisition, and communication with the host satellite processor. The design of systems and communications software to support the experiment is presented. Functional areas addressed by the design include: microcontroller and peripheral initialization; communication between the experiment and spacecraft processors; fault detection/recovery; recovery from loss of power; and development of an IBM PC based program to provide for pre-flight verification and testing of experiment hardware and software.