1. Fall 2009 Meeting Summary ESTEC
CCSDS SOIS Wireless WG
Fall 2009 Meeting Summary
ESTEC

2. Goals for 2009 Fall Meeting
There were two main goals for this fall’s meeting:
Discussion and identification of the necessary tasks for the completion of the RFID Inventory Management Magenta Book (now renamed “RFID-Based Inventory Management Systems”).
Discussion and find consensus on outline of initial draft of the spacecraft Magenta Book (now renamed “spacecraft onboard wireless low-rate monitoring and control”).
The WWG also had to review the required number Magenta Book (MB) and try to scope them accurately.

3. RFID Wireless First MB : RFID-Based Inventory Management Systems
The group has discussed in detail and evolved the Inventory Management (I/M) MB. We have refined the book’s structure and agreed on the actual content to be written during the next months.
Initial recommended practice for RFID-based I/M is
The book will recommend the following standard for applications using RFID technologies e.g. on ground and on the ISS.
ISO C standard, aka EPC Class 1 Gen 2
- This standard defines the physical and logical requirements for a passive-backscatter,
Interrogator-talks-first (ITF), radio-frequency identification (RFID) system operating in the
860 MHz MHz frequency range. The system comprises Interrogators (also known as
Readers), and Tags (also known as Labels).
The recommended practices will be complemented with application profiles and use-cases which still need to be written and added to the book. Examples of application profiles are scenarios using RFID handheld and portal-based systems.
The book schedule is on-track as detailed in the schedule slide (see last slide)

4. Intra-Spacecraft Wireless (1/2)
Second MB : Spacecraft Onboard Wireless Low-Rate Monitoring and Control
(acronym: SOWL-RMonC)
There was a clear need to insure that we properly scoped the MB and that it was also evolvable. The reason for that is the very high number of applications, scenarios and technologies that have to be properly categorized to insure a coherent structure within and between the different MBs.
The SOWL-RMonC MB will cover sensor networks to be used onboard spacecraft during its operational lifetime and during AIT phases.
There has been several discussions on the state-of-the-art standards that could achieve the goals targeted by this book. The three top-rated standards are all built on top of the IEEE PHY and some of them have slight differences for what concerns the original MAC layer:
IEEE : 2.45GHz band, Carrier-Sense Multiple Access (listen before talk)
WirelessHART: is open-standard wireless networking technology developed by HART Communication Foundation. The modified MAC utilizes a time synchronized, self-organizing, and self-healing mesh architecture. Unlike for , very few mature products are to be found.
ISA100.11a: The International Society for Automation generated a standard that is designed to be open, insure proper operation in the presence of interference, operate in harsh industrial environments. It is based on IEEE (MAC and physical layer), Time Synchronized Mesh Protocol, utilizes DSSS with channel/frequency hopping (with black lists of noisy channels) and mesh routing.

5. Intra-Spacecraft Wireless (2/2)
At the present, the working group does not feel enough confident in recommending one of these (very similar) technologies within the scope of the CCSDS.
Therefore, there has been an agreement to execute a series of tests and comparisons of the standards to assess which standard shall be recommended. NASA and ESA, helped by the Industry, will each perform testing of the above systems prior to April-2010.
There is a non-negligible challenge in accurately comparing the technologies without being biased by the particular implementations. The coming weeks will be used to come with characteristics and a common way of testing.
Because NASA has already some experience with ISA100.11a and WirelessHART, they will execute the tests and comparisons. ESA takes the responsibility of the IEEE standard, while engaging itself in pursuing some internal efforts related to ISA100.11a.
Another important discussion focused on if the recommended practices shall cover the Network layer (routing, mesh) in order to insure interoperability of e.g. European end-devices in an American-based wireless sensor network.
The conclusion is that we shall indeed cover the network layer and therefore consider the routing / meshing / topologies in the technology trade-off described above.
Similar to Zigbee, both ISA100.11a and WirelessHart are MAC-2-Application standards. We thus need to select a network layer for the traditional IEEE PHY and MAC (e.g. 6LowPAN (IP over 15.4) and ZigBeePro evolution and uptake).

6. Other topics Number of books Integration in the SOIS Architecture
The RFID-I/M MB should be released internally prior to the next meeting.
For the other book(s), the group decided to wait for the results of the scheduled tasks (see previous slides) before proposing any hierarchy of books targeting the spacecraft domain. We are working on the MB that will recommend practices for wireless sensor systems within spacecraft or habitats, but we are not yet sure about how many other books there should be. This will be investigated (and hopefully decided) further during the next April 2010 meeting.
Integration in the SOIS Architecture
This topic has not been discussed during this meeting as we believe that a more mature spacecraft domain book is needed prior to address the integration of SOIS services throughout the wireless network.
This topic will be discussed in more details during the Spring 2010 meeting. 6

7. RFID-Based I/M MB Plan Task/Milestone Description Date
RFID-Based I/M MB out for informal internal review
15-Jan-2009
Informal RFID-Based I/M MB review period complete
01-Mar-2010
Incorporate reviews and forward to SOIS A.D./CESG
15-Mar-2010
MB publication preparation for agency review complete; out for Agency Review
01-May-2010
Agency review complete
15-Jun-2010
Disposition of RIDS
15-Jul-2010
RFID-Based I/M MB publication and release
01-Sep-2010

8. WWG Spacecraft MB plan Task/Milestone Description Date
Drafting of the standard testing methodology and metrics for the MB; document to ensure proper comparisons
15-Jan-2010
Agency testing on , ISA100, WirelessHART complete and technology trade-off
15-Mar-2010
Incorporate supporting test data into SOWL-RMonC MB
30-Mar-2010
Spacecraft SOWL-RMonC MB initial draft
15-Apr-2010
Determine if ready to issue recommendations within the SOWL-RMonC MB Spring 2010 CCSDS Meeting
05-May-2010