The DTL/DML Mission Control System (MCS) Demonstrator

Introduction

Within the previous PECS project "Advanced SCOS-2000 Monitoring" ANF DATA participated in the development of ESA Ground Operations S/W (EGOS) generic libraries covering the management and transfer of telemetry packets. The MCS Demonstrator was a follow-on activity with the purpose of verifying the new EGOS Data Transfer and Data Management libraries (DTL/DML) within the existing Mission Control System SCOS-2000. The overall ESA project ‘DTL/DML MCS Demonstrator’ was performed by Siemens Austria as a prime contractor within the GSTP program, and ANF DATA as a subcontractor within the PECS program. The project started in December 2007 and finished in June 2010.

Description

The main benefit of the new architecture is that the data distribution components do not depend on the existing SCOS-2000 libraries. This allows reusing the new components not only within the SOCS-2000 Mission Control System (MCS) but also within other systems in the ESA ground segment. The new data distribution components (Basic Data Consumers, Providers, Distribution Nodes, and Filters) can be easily enhanced to support distribution of any type of data in a platform independent way. It is sufficient to define new data types by means of the Interface Definition Language (IDL), derive data filters from the existing Basic Filters (only if data filtering is required), and instantiate appropriate chain of data providers, data nodes, and data consumers –  adding specific functionality and/or data handling if/as needed.The telemetry reception and telemetry distribution chain of the SCOS-2000 MCS Demonstrator has been re-engineered using the new data distribution components. The Centralized Packet Distribution servers were replaced by the Generic Data Distribution Nodes, and the Packet Archiving Filing and Distribution servers were replaced by the Generic Data Distribution Nodes with additional filing capability.Unit, integration and system tests were performed with the automated testing framework ART (Automated Regression Testing). Performance tests of the SCOS-2000 MCS Demonstrator proved that the original requirements for the SCOS-2000 live data distribution chain were fulfilled.