Fiber optic data bus space experiment on board the microlectronics and photonics test bed (MPTB)

The Microelectronics and Photonics Test Bed (MPTB) is a space experiment which will evaluate the performance of components and sybsystems of important new technologies is advance of their deployment of future spacecraft. Devices aboard MPTB will monitor the environment, and the radiation effects data obtained on components will be compared to ground tests and predictions. We present a description of the proposed high performance fiber optic data bus (FODB) experiment for MPTB which will feature the newly available 200 Mbps Boeing STAR-FODB hardware which is designed for space applications. This bus uses a passive star architecture and implements a Linear Token Passing Bus (LTPB) standard. The existence of extensive ground radiation test results for the STAR-FODB will enable high confidence predicition of its on-orbit performance to be made prior to launch.