FireRing® (IEEE 1393) a Roadmap to Aerospace Plug and Play

Abstract

[Abstract] The IEEE 1393 Spaceborne Fiber Optic Data Bus standard defines the design requirements for a highly reliable, fault tolerant fiber optic network, that is compatible with the harsh thermal, mechanical, and radiation environments of aerospace applications. This 200 Mbps through 1 Gbps network supports the transport of high-speed synchronous and asynchronous data with high precision deterministic latency. IEEE 1393 is the only gigabit network developed specifically to meet the high-speed, real-time, data handling requirements of remote sensing aerospace platforms. The FireRing® network developed by Space Photonics, Inc. implements an IEEE 1393 compliant network with an extended data rate range of 155 Mbps to 2.5 Gbps. And with fully space flight qualifiable components. This Roadmap illustrates the approach and process of adapting an existing high-speed payload data handling network to a network compatible with the Responsive Space, Space Plug-andPlay Avionics (SPA) standard. The approach maximizes the use of existing SPA-U hardware and software to minimize the impact to the high-speed payload network. The resulting hybrid network is an efficient IEEE 1393 and SPA compliant 2.5 Gbps payload data handling network that minimizes the size, weight, power and complexity of the multi-gigabit network components.