Title of Paper: EVE: An Environment for On-board Processing
Principal Author: Mr. Steve Tanner
Abstract: The Information Technology and Systems Center
(ITSC) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) is investigating and developing
an innovative processing system capable of handling the unique constraints and
characteristics of the on-board satellite data and information environment. The
EnVironmEnt for On-Board Processing (EVE) system will serve as a
proof-of-concept of advanced information systems technology for remote sensing
platforms. EVE’s on-board, real-time processing will provide capabilities
focused on the areas of autonomous data mining, classification and feature
extraction. These will contribute to Earth Science research applications,
including natural hazard detection and prediction, fusion of multi-sensor
measurements, intelligent sensor control, and the generation of customized data
products for direct distribution to users. EVE is being engineered to provide high
performance data processing in a real-time operational environment. A
ground-based testbed is being created to provide testing of EVE and associated
Earth Science applications in a heterogeneous embedded hardware and software
environment.
The team is currently developing the architecture for the EVE system and
will soon be concentrating on prototype implementation and testing. One focus
of this prototype will be support for possible sensor-web based applications.
This will entail an Application Programming Interface (API) that will allow a
user to describe distributed processing plans and the on-board environments in
which to use them. The API will also provide support for describing sensor
control activities, and the real-time constraints required by their plan. Such
an approach will provide support for a wide range of distributed and
heterogeneous platforms, sensors and will be a key component of autonomous and
real-time decision systems.