A Complete EGSE Solution for the SpaceWire and SpaceFibre Protocol Based on the PXI Industry Standard

Abstract

This article presents a complete test equipment for the promising on-board serial high-speed SpaceFibre protocol, published by the European Committee for Space Standardization. SpaceFibre and SpaceWire are standard communication protocols for the latest technology sensor devices intended for on-board satellites and spacecrafts in general, especially for sensors based on image acquisition, such as scanning radiometers or star-tracking devices. The new design aims to provide the enabling tools to the scientific community and the space industry in order to promote the adoption of open standards in space on-board communications for current- and future-generation spacecraft missions. It is the first instrument expressly designed for LabVIEW users, and it offers tools and advanced features for the test and development of new SpaceFibre devices. In addition, it supports the previous SpaceWire standard and cross-communications. Thanks to novel cutting-edge design methods, the system complex architecture can be implemented on natively supported LabVIEW programmable devices. The presented system is highly customizable in terms of interface support and is provided with a companion LabVIEW application and LabVIEW Application Programming Interface (API) for user custom automated test-chains. It offers real-time capabilities and supports data rates up to 6.25 Gbps.The proposed solutions is then fairly compared with other currently available SpaceFibre test equipment. Its comprehensiveness and modularity make it suitable for either on-board device developments or spacecraft system integrations.

SpaceART SpaceWire Sniffer for Link Monitoring: A Complete Communication Analysis in a Time-Constrained Test Scenario

“…First, an introduction of the SpaceWire standard [ 3 ] and the state-of-the-art of SpaceWire EGSE and Link Analysers [ 6 , 8 , 10 , 12 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ] was given. Then, an overview about the SpaceART EGSE Emulator, described in [ 5 ], and the TM and TC commands [ 19 ] generated and transmitted in the test case were provided.…”

“…Since EGSEs play a key role during the integration and validation phases of the spacecraft life-cycle and given the large adoption of SpW protocol, some test equipment capable of supporting this standard have been designed, such as: STAR-Dundee SpaceWire EGSE and Device Simulator Mk2 , which comprises two SpW interfaces and makes use of USB3.0 as a Host-PC interface [ 8 , 9 ]; 4Links Diagnostic SpaceWire Interface (DSI) , which comprises eight SpW interfaces [ 10 ]; IngeniArs SpaceART , a general purpose SpW EGSE, including four SpW interfaces and Ethernet/PCIe interface to Host-PC [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]; Some SpW/SpaceFibre (SpFi) EGSE solution based on PXI industry standard have also been presented in [ 14 , 15 ]. …”

“…Some SpW/SpaceFibre (SpFi) EGSE solution based on PXI industry standard have also been presented in [ 14 , 15 ].…”

Measurement of an electroretinogram signal and display waves on graphical user interface by laboratory virtual instrument engineering workbench

“…The software unit involves three main components: laptop, LabVIEW [31], [32] and a printer for printing the result. The laptop is connected with the microcontroller via a universal serial bus (USB) cable.…”

Analysis of requirements for modern spacecraft onboard network protocols

“…SpaceWire met all the requirements for aerospace applications [5,6] and has become the dominant technology used for small sized spacecraft, landing modules, etc. [7,8]. Later, the SpaceWire protocol was supplemented with the GigaSpaceWire protocol [9], which provides gigabit speeds, and in 2019, the next-generation standard ECSS-E-ST-50-11C (SpaceFibre protocol) was released [10].…”