Systems Engineering & Assessment Ltd

For more information, visit the SEA web site at:

http://www.sea.co.uk

Or contact Nigel Towers
Marketing Director, Aerospace Systems Division

 

SEA BACKGROUND AND EXPERIENCE
Systems Engineering & Assessment Ltd (SEA) is an independent, employee owned, systems development house and technical consultancy. SEA employs approximately 200 employees with a projected turnover of approximately 20 MEuro. The company offers a wide range of professional project management, systems engineering and hardware & software system development services. SEA meets the ESA criteria to be classed as a Small to Medium Sized Enterprise (SME). SEA is fully assessed and approved in compliance with BS/EN/ISO 9001 and ISO 9000-3 to undertake:
  • Signal & Image Processing Systems
  • Feasibility and System Specifications
  • Design and Development of Systems
  • Technical Publications
  • Management Systems and Services
  • Hardware and Software development
The Company's head quarters, including a development laboratory and clean-room facilities, are located at Beckington Castle, near Bath. A second office is located in North Bristol. SEA consists of three divisions covering its main areas of work in Aerospace, Marine and Transport. In the field of Space SEA has the following capabilities:
  • Programme Management
  • Mission Analysis
  • System Definition
    • AOCS and Avionics, Payload Processing, SARs and Altimeters
  • Space Segment Hardware and Software development
    • Onboard Software, Onboard Processors
    • VHDL code generation, FPGA prototyping and ASIC design
    • Flight hardware design and development
  • Ground Segment Support Systems and Equipment
    • SAR Processors, SAR Calibration Transponders, EGSE

SEA has a core competence in digital signal processing applied to the aerospace, marine and transport markets. SEA produce complex electronic equipments for UK MoD, BNSC and ESA, at digital box level up to system integration and test of complete airborne payloads. Current and recent hardware development activities include:

  • Design and development of the Common Electronics Processor for the Beagle 2 Mars lander (to be flown on Mars Express). SEA has produced three Development Model boards.
  • SEA is teamed with Astrium Ltd and Science Systems (Space) Ltd for a BNSC funded DSP Applications Study. SEA have responsibility for hardware implementation including the test set up.
  • Development of the Digital Unit for the Ka Transponder for the KaTE instrument to be flown on SMART-1.
  • Design and development of the 4K Cooler Drive Electronics for the Planck mission. This development uses a DSP to execute an anti-vibration algorithm that will minimise the vibration imparted by the 4K cooler on the HFI sensor.
  • An ESA design study for an Advanced SAR Calibration Transponder and a follow-on contract to provide a prototype of the Transponder. SEA is responsible for the signal processing system.
  • Design and development of the METOP ASCAT Calibration Transponder for Astrium GmbH. SEA is responsible for the signal processing system.
  • Design and development of a Variable Rate Interface Module (VRIM) based on C40 DSPs for DERA. The VRIM is upgradeable without hardware changes through use of FPGAs and Flash-based micro-controller technologies.
  • Design and development of a Pulse Parameter Measurement Unit using FPGA technology (Altera FLEX 10K)

Current and recent software development activities include:

  • The STRV-1d Experiment Management Software implemented on an ESA supplied ERC-32 chip set. Despite the failure of STRV-1d the SEA software functioned correctly.
  • Development, under private venture funding, of SAR processing software and image viewer. The software has been licensed to military customer and to the Natural Resources Institute;
  • SEA has been awarded a series of study contracts from BNSC to investigate on-board SAR data processing including on-board calibration and SAR image data compression.

SEA also has a range of in-house mission analysis and instrument performance analysis tools which include the SEA Space Systems Analysis Toolset (SSATS) which supports remote sensing mission feasibility assessment for both single satellite and multi-satellite (constellation) mission profiles. The modules of the tool-set support modelling for both swath-staring and agile-pointing sensors. The suite includes a first-cut synthetic aperture radar sensor design tool and is used by ESA, the UK Defence Evaluation & Research Agency; NLR; the Canadian Department of Defence and European prime contractors.

SSATS modules that may be operated stand-alone, or in some instances may be linked to propagate the analysis results. The modules are:· Orbit and Coverage (O+C) - provides coverage maps and visit statistics for swath-based imaging systems installed on a single or constellation of earth observations spacecraft.· Space Mission Simulation (SMS) - an automated branch-and-bound scheduler optimises observation requests against defined criteria and mission related system engineering constraints.
SAR Performance Analysis (SPA) - first pass approximation of a SAR design to meet specified observational and/or mission parameters.· NextPERF - Space based multi-mode multi-frquency SAR design & performance analysis tool.
Concept of Operations Analysis Tool (CONOPS) - enables the analyst to determine the mission assets available (sensors, number and orbits of satellites, ground stations and any relay satellites) and determine the capability of the system to take and report images of specific fixed coverage areas or mobile targets.

SEA FACILITIES
SEA has offices in South West England, at Beckington, North Bristol and Keynsham (a shared facility from which SEA staff service the needs of a defence sector customer). The Beckington site includes the New Technology Centre (NTC) housing:

  • approximately 140 staff
  • a development laboratory including:
  • Class 100 vertical laminar-flow clean-cabinet facilities
  • Fume extraction cabinets for preparation of adhesives and conformal coating
  • Specialist tooling for wire crimping, lead bending and de-golding/pre-tinning operations
  • SEA technical library

The North Bristol Office (NBO) houses the Aerospace Systems Division, approximately 60 staff and the Virtual Reality Engineering Centre (VREC). The VREC comprises a Silicon Graphics (SGI) Onyx server driving 3-colour ceiling mounted projectors projecting Virtual Prototyping/Distributed Interactive Simulation images onto a curved screen occupying one end of a meeting room. The screen subtends a field of view of approximately 150o by 40o at the position occupied by up to 15 viewers

In addition to standard office facilities including, for example, MS Office Professional suite, an inter-site network and Internet Access the company facilities also include:

  • Alpha, SGI, UNIX, Windows and Windows-NT platforms to meet specific project requirements.
  • Full range of high level software language compilers, debuggers, Graphical User Interface design & development tools, software rapid prototyping tools
  • Requirements capture, management modelling (DOORS, UML)
  • System functional and performance modelling (MATLAB, C, C++)
  • Algorithm Development (MATLAB, C++)
  • Design & Development tools (software and hardware), including:
    • Mechanical (Solidworks , Autocad LT)
    • FPGA (Actel, Xilinx, Altera MAX Plus +II)
    • VHDL Desktop tools including Schematic Capture; VHDL entry & simulation (Veribest, Synplicity, Leonardo)
    • Orcad (Cadance) PSPICE (including Analogue simulation & schematic capture features)
    • Software Development (Yourden, UML, Ada, C, C++, Visual C++, VxWorks, Windows, Linux, QNX
    • TSC21020/SHARC DSP Tools
    • ERC-32 Tools

 

For more information, visit the SEA web site at:

http://www.sea.co.uk

Or contact Nigel Towers