OS Selection
According to wikipedia Operating System is defined as “An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs.” Sometimes it might be possible that the tasks of satellites cannot be dealt with a simple scheduling algorithm. In that case it might be necessary to use an Operating System to handle the software part of satellite. Some of the Operating Systems that have been already used in satellites are:
- eCos (used in CanX-1): The Embedded Configurable Operating System (eCos) is a free and open source real-time operating system intended for embedded systems and applications which need only one process with multiple threads.
- µClinux (used in UWE-1): μClinux is a variation of the Linux kernel, previously maintained as a fork, that targets microcontrollers without a memory management unit (MMU).
- VxWorks (used in PROBA-1): VxWorks is a multi-thread and real-time operating system. VXworks is the world leader of the optimization of software for peripherals.
- FreeRTOS (used in ESTCube-1): FreeRTOS is a popular real-time operating system kernel which has small memory footprint, low overhead and fast execution.
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