PDC SBCs deployed onboard SDA tracking satellites

22nd October 2024

Harry Fowle

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Power Device Corporation (PDC) has announced the successful deployment of its SCS3740 Single Board Computers (SBCs) onboard the Space Development Agency (SDA) Tracking satellites, built by L3Harris Technologies and launched into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in February by the Space X Falcon 9 rocket.

The four wide-field-of-view satellites complete the SDA network of Tranche 0 satellites on orbit, consisting of both Transport and Tracking Layer satellites, as part of the prototype demonstration phase of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), serving as a testbed for advanced hypersonic and ballistic missile warning, tracking and defence.

“PDC is excited to have supported L3Harris and the SDA on this groundbreaking satellite technology, which will eventually lead to a global network of real-time targeting data acquisition essential for early detection and continuous tracking of advanced missile threats. Our team would like to extend our congratulations to everyone involved on the successful launch, deployment and operation,” stated Rolf Mahler, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for PDC’s Space Microelectronics Group. “Since inception, more than 20 years ago, our electronic components (more than 100,000 shipped) and TRL-9 Single Board Computers have experienced zero failures in space, which will help to ensure the continued success of the SDA Tranche programme.”

SCS3740 Single Board Computer highlights:

PDC’s SCS3740 single board computers for space are compact, high performance (up to 1,700 DMIPS and 1 GFLOP) SWaP optimized 3U SpaceVPX products, offering many I/O options, including: SpaceWire, UART, CANbus, I2C, SPI, GPIO, 1553, and Ethernet.

Performance

GR740 Rad-Hard quad-core LEON 4FT processor
High speed processing – up to 1,700 DMIPS and 1 GFLOP
Low Power Consumption: 7W typical, 12W max

SBC radiation hardness

TID greater than 100krad (Si)
Single Event Effects: 1 Upset in 120 Years (GEO) – prelim
Also available in rad tolerant and lab/software development versions

Memory

1 GByte of EDAC corrected SDRAM
32 GByte of BCH corrected NAND with Flash File System
128 MByte of ECC-protected MRAM

I/O Interfaces

Integrated SpaceWire router: (8) General purpose SpaceWire ports (up to 200 Mbps each) and (1) SpaceWire debug port
(2) UART (RS-422 or LVDS), (2) CANbus, (2) I2C, (1) SPI, (1) 1553 (requires external PHY), (14) dedicated bi-directional GPIOs, (10) additional GPIOs if not using 1553, and (1) Ethernet