Implementation of scalable and automatic Earth observation ground system

Satellite Ground System (GS) is one of the most important components of Earth Observation (EO) infrastructure with functions of antenna control, data reception, data processing, archiving, data transmission and distribution etc. The GS architecture has evolved from the dedicated satellite receiving system to the multi-mission comprehensive system. The new generation GS should support comprehensive EO applications based on inter-agency cross-system interoperability between different EO application systems. To deal with the performance enhancement of EO satellites, many studies have been done to enhance the capacity and scalability of the new generation EO GSs. The former tightly coupled GS architecture had dedicated software for specific tasks and poor scalability that was difficult to implement the inter-agency cross-system interoperability between different EO application systems. Web services and open standards make it possible to develop the open and interoperable EO GS. This paper proposes an architectural framework for interoperable GS system implementation based on open standards. The multi-layer architecture was used to decouple the tightly integrated GS and implement the function modules into GS web services. The architecture consists of physical resource layer, module implementation layer, the interoperability layer, business logic layer, and user interface layer. Service-based workflow technology was used to compose and chain the processing process of the EO ground service into the complete business process. An experiment GS test bed was developed to test the GS architecture proposed in the paper.