Cross-Protocol Soft Bus for Heterogeneous Onboard Satellite Resources: Design and Implementation

With the rapid advancement of satellite technology and the shift towards Software-Defined Satellite (SDS) architectures, integrating heterogeneous onboard communication protocols has become increasingly challenging. This paper proposes a cross-protocol software bus based on XRCE-DDS, a lightweight DDS variant, designed to provide unified, efficient, and reliable communication among various protocols, including CAN, serial ports, and Ethernet. The proposed solution leverages XRCE-DDS's flexible client-agent architecture and multi-protocol support to simplify system integration, enhance interoperability, and reduce communication latency. Through comprehensive experimental evaluations, including functional verification and latency benchmarking against MQTT, the XRCE-DDS software bus demonstrated superior performance, maintaining communication delays consistently within milliseconds, and robustly supporting protocol switching scenarios. These results confirm its suitability and effectiveness for critical satellite communication applications.