SpaceFibre is a technology specifically designed for use onboard spacecraft that provides point to point and networked interconnections at Gigabit rates with Quality of Service (QoS) and Fault Detection, Isolation and Recovery (FDIR). SpaceFibre is backwards compatible with SpaceWire, allowing existing SpaceWire equipment to be incorporated into a SpaceFibre network without modifications at packet level.

In this work we present the family of SpaceFibre IP Cores developed by STAR-Dundee. It is composed of three different IPs: the Single-Lane Interface, the Multi-Lane Interface and the Routing Switch. The IP Cores are fully compliant with the SpaceFibre standard and have been carefully implemented to optimise their performance and minimise their footprint on radiation-tolerant FPGAs (e.g. RTAX, RTG4, BRAVE or Virtex-5QV) and ASICs. They have also been validated on commercial FPGAs (e.g. Igloo2, Spartan, Virtex, Kintex, etc.).

The Single-Lane Interface IP offers in a compact design (~3% of the RTG4/Virtex-5QV) the maximum possible line rates provided by embedded or external transceivers (i.e. 3.125 Gbps in RTG4, 4.25 Gbps in Virtex-5QV and 2.5 Gbps in RTAX using the TLK2711-SP transceiver). The Multi-Lane Interface IP allows much higher data rates and adds all the advantages of combining multiple lanes without multiplying the resources required (e.g. ~5-6% for 3 lanes in RTG4/Virtex-5QV). The SpaceFibre Routing Switch IP Core is a scalable, fully configurable non-blocking router, allowing to select the number of virtual channels and ports. This routing switch implements path and logical addressing, group adaptive routing, virtual networks, time distribution and message broadcast. A router of 4 ports each with 4 virtual channels typically requires less than 20% of an RTG4, including the SpFi interfaces.

The IP Cores presented in this article provide the building blocks for creating the next generation of onboard networks with in-built QoS and FDIR mechanisms, and are currently being implemented in several missions and products all over the world. We analyse the performance and capabilities of the different IP Cores, and discuss the resources required depending on several parameters such as the number lanes, ports, virtual channels and virtual networks.

SpaceFibre is a high performance, high availability technology for space flight and other demanding applications. The recent generation of image sensors are capable of data rates of several Gbps. SpaceFibre is ideal as an interface to such an image sensor. STAR-Dundee has designed a complete camera, which incorporates a radiation tolerant FPGA for sensor interfacing and control, and image signal processing. This paper introduces SpaceFibre, the Microsemi RTG4 FPGA, the CMV4000 image sensor and describes the complete SpaceFibre camera.

SpaceVPX (VITA 78.0) is built on the ruggedized VPX standard. It addresses the need for redundancy in spaceflight systems and focusses on conduction cooled racks. SpaceVPX replaces the VMEbus control-plane of VPX with SpaceWire, while retaining the versatility of a user defined data plane serial interconnect. SpaceVPX-Lite (VITA 78.1) reduces the size and complexity of SpaceVPX. This paper describes a SpaceVPX-Lite board which uses SpaceWire and/or SpaceFibre for its backplane connections. The architecture of board is described along with its configuration options. An example application of the board as a wideband spectrometer is then described.

Thorough testing is required for successful SpaceFibre equipment and system development. This helps identify defects and provides assurance equipment operates as expected. The STAR Fire Mk3 can transmit and receive SpaceFibre traffic to stimulate and emulate SpaceFibre equipment for test purposes. In addition, it can capture and display SpaceFibre traffic, aiding debug and validation efforts. The SpaceFibre Recorder increases capture functionality further, recording significantly larger quantities of traffic over multiple SpaceFibre lanes. This paper considers how the hardware and software capabilities provided by these units may be used to test SpaceFibre equipment and systems.