Abstract

Developing newer satellite missions faces increased onboard software complexity. Next generations of small satellites need to enable the infrastructure for implementation of concurrent and deterministic onboard algorithms for mission coordination and control. Multi-agent-based architectures are a new developing approach adopted in the software engineering field due to its flexibility, scalability, and adaptability to dynamic operating environments. This paper describes the design and implementation of a deterministic multi-agent system framework to develop applications for highly constrained embedded computers used in small satellite missions. As a result of the implementation of this framework the user coding effort for describing complex onboard software applications is reduced up to 50% with minimum impact on CPU load and program memory allocation. This paper also shows a set of benchmarks that demonstrate not only the feasibility of MAS-based software for small satellite missions but its value to achieve aggressive development schedules.

Keywords: MAS engineering; framework; embedded systems; real-time; agent; multi-agent