Student computer science or similar (f/m/x)

The German Aerospace Agency (DLR) is developing the Scalable On-board Computing for Space Avionics (ScOSA) as a hybrid distributed computing architecture that provides high performance on-board processing while maintaining high reliability compared to traditional on-board computing approaches. A next step for this type of distributed on-board software is the management of autonomous distributed space system architectures such as: distributed spacecraft, fractionated satellites, or satellite constellations. The design of adaptive management algorithms is key to enable inter-satellite collaboration and opportunistic resources reutilization, while still providing mechanisms for autonomous spacecraft operations. Furthermore, these algorithms should take into account distributed spacecraft limitations such as network disruptions, limited network capacity, network reconfiguration due to failed or reintegrated nodes. Therefore, the goal of this thesis work is to study distributed spacecraft flight software architectures, such as the Local-Global policy, using network simulation tools (e.g. Mininet) to study their performance under different system topologies, and to study their applicability to the evolution of the ScOSA architecture.

The thesis work includes the following tasks: