Galvanic isolation of SpaceWire receivers: SpaceWire components, short paper

This paper summarizes the need for galvanic isolation in SpaceWire networks and reviews the limitations of current isolation solutions; the paper also proposes a new Isolated SpaceWire Receiver device based on radiation-hardened Silicon-on-Sapphire (SoS) technology and demonstrates the benefits of primarily isolating only the receiver lines of an SpW port. As a stepping-stone to the proposed device, a discrete galvanic isolation receiver module will be demonstrated using Silanna's core isolator chip along with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) LVDS transmitters, LVDS receivers, and an isolated DC-DC converter to power all circuitry across the isolation barrier. To ease testing & evaluation, the SpW isolator module can be simply implemented by cascading inline to an existing SpW port, or by replacing the SpW pigtail connector, or even by replacing the LVDS transmitter & receiver stages. The proposed integrated solution is expected to have on-chip isolated power and operate up to 400 Mbps, handling a common-mode of 100 V-RMS, and a galvanic isolation of 1 kV-RMS.