Data Budget

Data budget is tabulated calculation of data being generated in a system, data being stored and memory allocation for the same. The amount of data to be processed in every iteration of the processor or one loop or sequence of all the activities can be known from data budget.
In case of the satellite, the data budget will include data generated by payload instrument, health monitoring parameters, housekeeping data, process variables, status variables, sensor data, etc. We need to ensure that sufficient data storage is available for them. Also, the processor selection is guided by the amount of data it has to process every iteration or cycle. Typically, image processing involves higher computation needs due to high data rates which need to be processed in a cycle. Data budget will also involve calculations on how much data is downlinked. All the data generated in orbit is not downlinked as it may not be possible due to available bandwidth, speed of communication and time available for downlink. Hence data is selected, packaged and sent via downlink. Thus, a constraint on the downlink is obtained from here.

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