SpaceFibre is the next generation of the widely used SpaceWire technology for spacecraft on-board data-handling applications. SpaceFibre provides much higher performance, has integrated quality of service and fault detection, isolation and recovery capabilities. It runs over electrical or fibre optic media and is able to operate over distances of up to 5 m over electrical cables and 100 m over fibre optic cables. The SpaceFibre network layer uses the same packet format and routing concepts as SpaceWire, enhancing them with the concept of independent, parallel virtual networks, each of which operates like an independent SpaceWire network running over a single physical network. An essential component in a SpaceFibre network is the routing switch. STAR-Dundee has designed, built and tested a SpaceFibre routing switch in a commercial FPGA, using it to support the testing and validation of the network layer concepts developed for SpaceFibre. The architecture of the SUNRISE router is described and current work transferring this design to radiation tolerant technology is outlined.

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.