Quality and Reliability Considerations of Earth Observation Payload Electronics for LEO satellite

• Published in: 2021 9th International Conference on Reliability, Infocom Technologies and Optimization (Trends and Future Directions) (ICRITO) pp. 1 - 5
• Main Authors: Chippalkatti, Vinod S, Biradar, Rajashekhar C, Kolli, Poojitha, Supriya, G R
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 03-09-2021
• Subjects: Aerospace electronics; COTS; Earth; Fault Tree; FMECA; Low earth orbit satellites; MTBF; Reliability; Reliability engineering; Reliability theory; Satellite Payload subsystem; Space vehicles; System Reliability; WCCA FITS
• DOI: 10.1109/ICRITO51393.2021.9596558

Space environment is one of the hardest to replicate apart from being the harshest one for electronics to operate. Several electronics subsystems co-exist in a confined environment in a satellite and communicate among themselves and with earth. Since they are not accessible for routine maintenance and repair, the quality and reliability must be the highest for satellite's successful operation for the designed mission life. Several quality assurance steps start from the evolution of the design with selection of components, necessary redundancies and through various reliability assessments like thermal, structural, derating, reliability estimation, failure mode effects and criticality Analysis (FMECA), worst case circuit analysis (WCCA) and fault tree analysis (FTA). The quality control steps cover compliance to the workmanship standards, traceability, delivery of data packs and test evaluation procedures further ensures the system performance in extreme stress conditions. This paper covers the details of the quality and reliability aspects that need to be considered during the design development and delivery of space systems. An earth observation payload electronics for a small satellite operating in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is used as a case study for traversing the journey of quality and reliability analysis.