Sunrise: A spacefibre router

SpaceFibre is a new generation of SpaceWire technology which is able to support the very high datarates required by sensors like SAR and multi-spectral imagers. Data rates of between 1 and 16 Gbits/s are required to support several sensors currently being planned. In addition a mass-memory unit requires high performance networking to interconnect many memory modules. SpaceFibre runs over both electrical and fibre-optic media and provides and adds quality of service and fault detection, isolation and recovery technology to the network. SpaceFibre is compatible with the widely used SpaceWire protocol at the network level allowing existing SpaceWire devices to be readily incorporated into a SpaceFibre network. SpaceFibre provides 2 to 5 Gbits/s links (2.5 to 6.25 Gbits/s data signalling rate) which can be operated in parallel (multi-laning) to give higher data rates. STAR-Dundee with University of Dundee has designed and tested several SpaceFibre interface devices. The SUNRISE project is a UK Space Agency, Centre for Earth Observation and Space Technology (CEOIST) project in which STAR-Dundee and University of Dundee will design and prototype critical SpaceFibre router technology necessary for future on-board data-handling systems. This will lay a vital foundation for future very high data-rate sensor and telecommunications systems. This paper give a brief introduction to SpaceFibre, explains the operation of a SpaceFibre network, and then describes the SUNRISE SpaceFibre Router. The initial results of the SUNRISE project are described.