SpaceFibre Onboard Interconnect: From Standard, Through Demonstration, to Space Flight

SpaceFibre has been developed to provide a high data-rate, high-reliability, high-availability interconnect for spacecraft onboard applications [1]. Other drivers include a small footprint, simplicity of implementation, quality of service, and backwards compatibility with SpaceWire at the packet level. SpaceWire, developed in 2003, is now used as a moderate data-rate payload data-handling network on hundreds of space missions [2] [3]. This paper describes the development of SpaceFibre from drafting of the standard, through development, testing and evaluation of key elements of the technology, to complete system-level demonstration, and finally to its first operational use in space.