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The CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) is a joint ESA-Switzerland space mission dedicated to the search for exoplanet photometric transits. Its launch readiness is expected at the end of 2017. The CHEOPS instrument will be the first space telescope dedicated to search for transits on bright stars already known to host planets. By being able to point at nearly any location on the sky, it will provide the unique capability of determining accurate radii for a subset of those planets for which the mass has already been estimated from ground-based spectroscopic surveys. To reach its goals CHEOPS will measure photometric signals with a precision of 20 ppm in 6 hours of integration time for a 9th magnitude star. This corresponds to a signal-to-noise ratio of 5 for a transit of an Earth-sized planet orbiting a solar-sized star. Achieving the precision goal requires thorough post-processing of the data acquired by the CHEOPS' instrument system (CIS) in order to remove as much as possible the instrument's signature. To this purpose, a rigorous calibration campaign will be conducted after the CIS tests in order to measure, its behavior under the different environmental conditions. The main tool of this calibration campaign is a custom-made calibration system that will inject a stimulus beam in the CIS and measure its response to the variation of electrical and environmental parameters. These variations will be compiled in a correction model. Ultimately, the CIS photometric performance will be measured on an artificial star, applying the correction model This paper addresses the requirements applicable to the calibration system, its design and its design performance.
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