Towards SpaceWire-2: Space robotics needs: SpaceWire missions and applications, long paper

Abstract

A number of evolutions of the SpaceWire standard [1] and usage recommendations have been developed over the past decade. As a result, the original standard is slowly evolving towards a so-called SpaceWire-2 (SpW-2) standard family, covering legacy SpaceWire, SpW-Rev1 and SpaceFibre [2],[3]. Besides other use cases that are mainly covered through on-going actions structured through the SAVOIR-UNION working group [4], the requirements of the future on-board network systems should also cover the needs of space robotics which is a rapidly evolving engineering discipline and one of the potential space applications of SpaceWire-2. This paper presents a number of robotics-specific needs that should be taken in consideration for the definition of SpW-2, and investigates the capabilities provided by the SpaceWire standard and evolutions (SpW rev1 and mainly SpaceFibre).