The EarthCARE Payload Data Ground Segment

The EarthCARE (Earth Clouds, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer) mission will be equipped with four co-located instruments (three from ESA and one provided by JAXA) to obtain information on aerosol/clouds/radiation and their interaction through the processing of single instrument data as well as synergistic products. The Payload Data Ground Segment (PDGS) is the component of the overall EarthCARE Ground Segment in charge to receive the housekeeping telemetry and instrument source packets via X-Band from the satellite, to process the packets for generating the different levels products and disseminate them to users in few hours from sensing. The main products include level 0 (corrected and time sorted packets), level 1B (instrument science data calibrated and geolocated), level 2A (geophysical parameters derived from a single instrument) and level 2B or synergistic products (geophysical parameters derived by merging information of several EarthCARE instruments). The PDGS is also in charge of the routine calibration and monitoring of the three ESA instruments, of products quality control as well as planning of payload operations To this purpose the EarthCARE PDGS is made of several components called facilities. In terms of functionality most components are similar to other PDGS developed by ESA for Earth Observation Missions, nevertheless some specific aspects of this mission have led to specific implementation. In particular, the synergistic nature of the mission results in a complex processing model which involves about 30 different processors. In order to streamline the integration of this large amount of processors and in anticipation of initially frequent updates, a formal modelling of the processing chain has been introduced to support automatic configuration of the processing facility in addition, a new facility called the Level 2 TestBed has been included in the PDGS in order to allow processor developers to test their code in quasi operational conditions and in an autonomous way including the possibility to upload new processor versions without assistance from PDGS operators. The presence of a Japanese Instrument on-board also imposes tight dependencies between the ESA and JAXA components in terms of processing as well as in terms of payload planning. This poster presents the functional and architectural breakdown of the PDGS, external interfaces including FOS (Flight Operation Segment), ECMWF and JAXA. It details the main design drivers including data latency, production model, data volumes and network bandwidth. The current integration status of the PDGS and its underlying facility is also presented.