Centralized, Distributed, and Module-Integrated Electric Power System Schemes in CubeSats: Performance Assessment

Abstract

Pico-satellites, also called CubeSats, have gained significant attention in recent years because they offer a low-cost and low-power solution with low latency communication and high data rates compared to larger satellites. The most critical subsystem in a CubeSat is the Electrical Power Subsystem (EPS) that provides the needed power to operate the remaining subsystems. The EPS mainly incorporates solar panels (generation), power electronic converters (shaping and distribution), and battery cells (storage). One of the main factors in EPS design is the system's reliability. This work proposes a module-integrated (MI) scheme for EPS architectures to increase the reliability through modularity and redundancy. Furthermore, a comparison between different EPS architectures (centralized, distributed, and module-integrated EPS topologies) based on Direct Energy Transfer (DET) and Peak Power Transfer (PPT) is presented. A performance evaluation is conducted considering different factors, such as reliability, fault ride-through capability, efficiency, re-usability, and scalability. The results confirm that MI architectures have higher reliability than centralized and distributed architectures.