A flexible and heterogeneous framework for scientific image data processing on-board the Solar Orbiter PHI instrument

Abstract

Present scientific space instruments generate a high amount of raw data while deep-space missions only have a very limited telemetry rate. Because the computation of the scientific relevant parameters is usually accompanied with the reduction of the data, the processing is desired to be carried out already on-board. To accomplish this, the following paper presents a flexible image processing framework which makes use of a heterogeneous data processing module consisting of a space-grade General Purpose Processor (GPP) as well as two dynamically reconfigurable Field-Programmable Gate Arrays used for hardware acceleration. The flexibility and capabilities of the presented framework are proven by means of three exemplary processing tasks of the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) on-board Solar Orbiter. © 2019 SPIE.