Developing Earth Observation (EO) technology constantly struggles against high data rates, low storage space, incompatible interfaces, satellite-to-ground station bottlenecks, and many other factors. While operating in such an innovative field is never going to be a walk in the park, it becomes easier when you can solve these issues sooner rather than later in the development process. Xiphos is here to support your EO development operations by offering flight heritage, SWaP-C-optimized solutions that support heavy data management and custom logic designed to improve image quality, Xiphos is here to support your EO development operations. Here are five common pain points our products can help solve.
A common challenge in developing EO applications is finding compatible processors and camera boards. Xiphos solves this challenge by creating widely adaptable Q-cards that integrate with all standard EO systems. This means you can develop your own prototyping on the Linux workstation using tools you’re already familiar and comfortable with, then transplant that into one of our processors to speed up development and minimize the number of transitions involved.
For example, the Q8 Camera Board, a high-performance image processing board designed to work with the Q8 processor card, features two Camera Link interfaces, plus GigE Ethernet, Serial, GPIO, and payload voltage rails. This daughterboard allows you to insert the Q8 into any existing system with high-bandwidth video or imagery streams and supports diverse camera types and missions. In fact, it has flight heritage in a variety of remote sensing and EO applications. Xiphos also offers the option to customize products to your specific application requirements and mission objectives.
EO technology is constantly charting new territory, which can lead to delayed development and on-orbit failures where untested products are involved. To mitigate this risk, customers come to Xiphos to leverage heritage products. One example is GHGSat, a remote sensing company that uses satellites to measure greenhouse gas emissions directly from industrial sites. Because the innovative nature of their applications carried a large technical risk, they wanted to use products with flight heritage as much as possible. With its high performance, robustness, and flight heritage across multiple customers, Xiphos’ Q7 (and later Q8) gave them the confidence to proceed and enabled GHGSat to deliver emissions data to government and industry decision-makers at unprecedented speeds. To this day, GHGSat has never run into quality or performance issues with the Q7, Q8, or Camera Boards and relies on Xiphos for each payload generation.
📝 Read our full case study on Earth observation data processing with GHGSat
Xiphos has years of video and image processing experience, especially in accelerating image processing inside logic, correcting pixels at line speed, and creating products that are widely adaptable to a range of cameras. Our flight heritage extends across hundreds of processors launched to date, providing a solid core to build around and minimizing the risk involved in application development.
Xiphos’ integrated hardware gives you more options than traditional solutions, providing full control over the firmware, Operating System, and software, allowing customers to adapt the solution, update tasks, and adjust data downlinked as needed while on orbit. In particular, our level zero data products will enable you to apply new algorithms, match overlay data sets, and complete other functions later on, giving your product the flexibility to adapt to changing needs.
Our products also come with edge computing capabilities that allow for accelerated logic and AI-enabled processing, enabling greater tip and cue functionalities. This gives you the ability to launch constellations of satellites with slightly different sensors on each, and when one observes activity, immediately cue a more specific request through the satellite link.
EO payloads generate massive amounts of data to be transferred and processed. Capturing that data at precisely the right time and transmitting it to the customer with the shortest delay possible is an ever-present challenge.
At Xiphos, we have a long history of optimizing communications. Rather than solely relying on the traditional method of employing ground stations to communicate with a satellite every hour or so, our products can also interface directly with inter-satellite communication channels, which provide data offload flexibility. This enables just-in-time communications and allows you to interact with the satellite when it’s out of view of a ground station. We also offer compression and on-board pre-processing to remove bad data, filter out clouds, and correct other potential issues; these features pair well with the hybrid FPGA/Scalar processor architecture Xiphos provides.
In situations where on-board processing isn’t possible, transferring data from the camera into storage as quickly as possible becomes crucial. Our products allow for quick data transfers to facilitate spot measurements and prevent bottlenecks, and our processing boards are built to handle high-pixel images and high-speed data rates. Plus, we offer bulk storage, including options with multiple terabytes of data. Xiphos offers more than just standard processing capabilities: via Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), we provide custom logic designed to correct distortion and deliver the best image quality possible.
A major challenge in most EO projects is a lack of processing power. On satellites, every watt matters, and the ability to manage and transport data without extended solar rays or significantly larger power systems is key to mission success. Lack of space is also an issue as engineers try to squeeze optics, cameras, and processing systems into a tiny physical space.
Xiphos’ Q-cards minimize size, weight, and power to allow for efficient geospatial operations. Our compact, power-efficient processors fit in the palm of your hand, saving EO innovators like GHGSat 10 to 20 watts per satellite. They also help simplify system architecture by providing all data management capabilities in one product. Our daughterboards, such as the Q7 Camera Board and the Q8 Camera Board, interface directly with camera electronics, minimizing the need to develop your own custom interface hardware.
Whether your EO mission concerns climate change, weather sensing, exploring land surfaces, or another function, Xiphos’ flight-proven, low SWaP products offer an optimized solution for faster, easier satellite development.