3.2 Intelligent SpaceWire Router with Multilevel Priority Arbitration and Multicast Packet Transmission

Event
ettc2020 - European Test and Telemetry Conference
2020-06-23 - 2020-06-25
Virtual Conference
Chapter
3. Telemetry & Ground Systems
Author(s)
G. Skvarc Božic, M. Plattner - Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics, Garching (Germany)
Pages
98 - 106
DOI
10.5162/ettc2020/3.2
ISBN
978-3-9819376-3-3
Price
free

Abstract

SpaceWire (SpW) is a major communication standard used to connect systems in spacecrafts. It sup-ports point-to-point and network connections. For the Wide-Field-Imager payload onboard the ESA ATHENA satellite, the next generation European x-ray observatory, we have designed an intelligent SpW router. It supports dynamic multilevel priority arbitration based on a maximum finder circuit and multicast packet transmission. The SpW router was implemented as a VHDL component to have a flexible design and a possibility to include it in other projects. The implemented SpW router has an RMAP supported configuration port for remotely configuring the router.

A test setup was designed to characterize and test the SpW router functionality. A routing delay and a packet router latency were determined. Simultaneous packet traffic from different sources with the same and different priority levels was emulated to demonstrate the arbitration functionality. Based on performed tests, the implemented router achieved a satisfying performance with the capability of han-dling transmission rates up to 200 Mbps. Moreover, the designed router increases payload system functionality, eases the design of more complicated networks, and enables a new way to design re-dundant systems with its multicast transmission support.

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