SPACE TECH has organized an event with international participation called ”Space Systems Engineering Workshop”.

The workshop took place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, George Baritiu Street, No.25, First Floor, Tertea Amphitheater, on 21.11.2023.

The event brought together almost 100 professionals from the space sector. We had guest from international organizations such as ESA and SME4Space, and from national organizations such as ROSPIN, ROSA, ROMSPACE, as well as representatives from the industrial, academic and research environment from Romania.

The event not only provided a holistic view of Romania’s current space landscape and its promising future but also was a platform to connect with an array of space industry professionals. The workshop was structured in two parts:

• In the first part, we were honoured to have as keynote speakers three experts in the space field. Mr. Eng. Cosmonaut Dr. Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu who started the event with a presentation of „Space governance in the future planetary exploration” followed by Mr. Eng. Dr. Nickolaos Panagiotopoulos expert in avionics and ESA representative and also Mrs. Eng. Danai Bournou representative of the international organization SME4Space .
• The second part included insightful presentations from our Space Tech members comprising a range of perspectives from industry leaders, academia, and research experts across Romania.

The main areas of the presentations were on wireless communications, satellite navigation and positioning systems, artificial intelligence and other types of technologies applied in the aerospace sector.

We thank you for your contribution to ”Space Systems Engineering Workshop” and we look forward to seeing you at our next event in 2024.

Founded in 1994, Control Data Systems SRL (CDS) is a privately owned technology company located in the Liberty Technology Park of Cluj-Napoca, an important IT hub in North-West Romania. CDS is a developer of wireless products and technologies for industrial applications in areas such as aerospace, oil & gas and environmental monitoring. The company focuses on developing ISA100 2.0 and Wireless Hart compliant radio modems and gateways that bring industrial Wireless Sensor Networks into the Internet of Things. The radio modems and wireless gateways designed and manufactured by CDS are compliant with the standards and regulations required by the main industrialized regions of the world (Europe, Americas, Japan) in terms of safety and electromagnetic compatibility.

The CDS software team has extensive experience with the definition and implementation of critical standards that form the base of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), or Industry 4.0, ecosystem, such as 802.15.4 physical and MAC layers, 6lowPan, RPL and IPv6. This expertise has been applied to implementing 2 of the most prominent standards for wireless communications in industrial environments, namely ISA100 2.0 and Wireless HART, making CDS one of the very few companies in the world with expertise in both standards.

The CDS hardware team possesses the required skills and capabilities in order to execute professionally the hardware design of industrial grade radio modems and wireless router boards under tight requirements for reliability, manufacturability, cost and long life time. With access to state of the art equipment for RF measurements and characterization, the CDS engineers have the capabilities required to perform the complex task of validating radio designs for performance and regulatory compliance.

In order to ensure high product quality and fast availability, CDS has developed a network of reputable EMS subcontractors for high volume product manufacturing that meets the most demanding quality standards in the industry.

This application of wireless technologies consists in replacing the conventional wiring of sensors used during the AIT phase with wireless RF links. Two types of sensors are typically being used during environmental tests: thermocouples and accelerometers. For each satellite undergoing environmental tests, between 1,500 and 2,000 sensors are installed prior to test, currently by running wires. This is time consuming and at the same time presents the risk of damaging internal components of the satellite due to the intensive manual labor required to run the wires at the beginning of the test and also to remove those wires once the test has completed. It is therefore of substantial benefit to eliminate or reduce the sensor wiring by replacing the wires with wireless connections from the sensors to the test system.

The wireless Data Acquisition System is composed of up to 200 Wireless T/C Nodes which are installed on the spacecraft, each of them being capable to host up to 10 thermocouples. The Wireless T/C Nodes are interconnected in a Wireless Sensor Network that is managed by a Wireless Gateway. The Wireless Gateway is a standard ISA100 Wireless product which can be procured from several manufacturers, including CDS, as COTS component. The Wireless gateway is installed outside of the Thermal Vacuum chamber and therefore does not need to meet the environmental requirements for thermal vacuum. The wireless links between the Wireless T/C Nodes and the Wireless Gateway are replacing the wired connections which would otherwise have to come out of the TVAC chamber. The Wireless Gateway is connected directly to the data acquisition system and to a PC Application used for monitoring by operators.

The Centre of competence for wireless Intra-SATellite Technologies (IntraSAT-Tech) was founded in 2016 within the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (TUC-N). The scope of IntraSAT-Tech is to perform research, development, and innovation activities related to satellite systems, including the technological niche of wireless intra-satellite communications. IntraSAT-Tech targets the provisioning of a collaboration platform for researchers that have expertise in satellite communications systems. Therefore, IntraSAT-Tech aims to: enhance the collaboration between individual researchers, foster a culture of cooperation between research clusters of TUC-N and industry (especially SMEs), engage specialists from leading national research institutions and industry, and provide the necessary infrastructure and knowledge/expertise to be accessed by researchers or industrial specialists with interests within or related to satellite communication systems.
The existing resources available at the IntraSAT-Tech Centre (complete list at http://erris.gov.ro/IntraSAT-Tech) include hardware instrumentation and dedicated software tools for on-board satellite link emulation (STAR-Dundee SpaceWire equipment), rapid prototyping of high-performance wireless communication systems (National Instruments SDR solution) and for testing and measurements (Rohde & Schwarz Instruments), providing a comprehensive platform for the implementation of research projects in the field of satellite communications.
The research interests of the IntraSAT-Tech team span across a wide range of radio access technologies (from wireless sensor networks to terrestrial and satellite communications networks) and envisage both fundamental microwave / radiocommunications aspects (such as radio channel modelling, radio network planning, protocol stack definition, antenna design and optimization) and radiocommunication technologies with special applications (such as wireless intra-satellite communications, channel modelling and traffic management in high throughput satellite systems, space surveillance and tracking, beamforming antenna arrays, and wireless location and positioning).