A SpaceWire router architecture with non-blocking packet transfer mechanism

A new SpaceWire router architecture with packet segmentation and multiplexing capability is presented. The aim is to resolve a blocking phenomenon, or an increase of packet transfer latency, that can happen in a SpaceWire network formed by ordinary SpaceWire routers. To resolve the blocking of packet transfer in a router caused by worm-whole routing of a preceding packet, we designed, implemented, and tested, a non-blocking packet transfer mechanism that uses the SpaceWire-R protocol for segmentation of packets, acknowledgement, multiplexing of segments, and management of an end-to-end communication channel. The mechanism is implemented as an extension to an existing SpaceWire router. The SpaceWire-R part is implemented as an extension module to the existing SpaceWire router VHDL IP core, and we do not modify SpaceWire router specification at all. Details of the architecture, implementation result, and performance evaluation result are shown in the present paper.