SpaceFibre Interfaces and Architectures

SpaceFibre is the next generation of Space Wire network technology for spacecraft on-board data-handling. It runs over electrical or fibre-optic cables, operates at very high data rates, and provides in-built quality of service (QoS) and fault detection, isolation and recovery (FDIR) capabilities, providing high-reliability and high-availability. This paper provides an introduction to SpaceFibre and then describes how SpaceFibre can be used as an instrument interface, as the interface and memory interconnection network in a mass-memory unit, as the interface to a downlink transmitter and as the backplane for a payload processing unit. The paper also describes an overall payload processing architecture based on SpaceFibre and explains how existing SpaceWire equipment can be readily integrated into a SpaceFibre network.