A prototype SpaceVPX lite (VITA 78.1) system using SpaceFibre for data and control planes

SpaceVPX (VITA78.0) is a new development in the area of standard backplanes for spacecraft applications, which addresses the key issue of fault tolerance. SpaceVPXLite (VITA78.1) is a derivative of SpaceVPX which is aimed at small size. SpaceFibre is the next generation of the widely used SpaceWire on-board network technology. SpaceFibre runs at multi-Gbits/s over both electrical and fibre-optic cables. SpaceFibre is capable of fulfilling a wide range of spacecraft on-board communications applications because of its inbuilt quality of service (QoS) and fault detection, isolation and recovery (FDIR) capabilities. SpaceFibre is being incorporated in the SpaceVPXLite standard as a protocol for sending information over a backplane. STAR-Dundee is developing a demonstration system of SpaceFibre in SpaceVPXLite, using the Microsemi RTG4 radiation tolerant FPGA. This demonstration system is being used as the engineering model of a UK THz radiometer instrument processing unit.