The increasing importance of time and space partitioning was a key consideration for OneWeb when choosing XtratuM Hypervisor.
On October 14th, OneWeb launched its 11th batch of satellites and reached the halfway point of its planned constellation with 358 satellites orbiting.
OneWeb is positioning as one of the main Internet providers from space in the forthcoming years and proof of that is the successful lift-offs of the past months. This satellite network will guarantee “Internet access everywhere, for everyone” through the deployment of a total of 648 satellites which will represent a major development for many areas with lack of Internet connectivity.
This mission is one of the biggest examples of “New Space” that is arising in the recent years due to better-off capabilities that large constellations with small satellites have shown up. As a result, the market presents a need for solutions which can reduce size, weight and energy consumption in these systems while achieving substantial time-to-market decrease and much lower development and recurring costs. One of the promising solutions in this aspect is the time and space partitioning technology which allows a single on-board computer to run different applications without interfering with one another.
In this context, OneWeb is fully capable of offering this non-interference of satellite applications with different criticality levels running on the same on-board computer through the use of the XtratuM Hypervisor. This solution developed by fentISS, a Spanish software company, provides a robust environment for on-board computers to run several real-time OS on different partitions and still guarantee their temporal and spatial isolation.
XtratuM has shown that it is especially suitable for safety-critical applications in the aerospace market and OneWeb is the greatest proof of its qualification in this industry. Other orbiting satellites like ANGELS or EyeSat have also chosen this hypervisor as a basis for their on-board computers.
OneWeb achieves an exciting milestone with this launch of 36 satellites which takes the company over halfway to completing the scheduled fleet of 648 satellites. The communications constellation is clearly one step closer to provide Internet access in remote areas where cable connection does not reach and to offer high speed connections everywhere for everyone.
