Gigabit Ethernet Switch Characterization over VPX Backplane

Abstract

Complexity & Criticality have made the latest state of the art Military/Aerospace systems more and more I/O and data intensive. Demand for huge chunk of signal information drives the innovation in the technology to make the systems capable of transforming the data at higher and higher speeds. So, computers and communication devices use VPX technology to communicate with other devices because, VPX support multi Gigabit communication and it is very rugged, compact and portable. So switching systems used for communication in military and aerospace should also support VPX connectivity. Characterizing switch, which gives connectivity on VPX and which communicate through VPX switched fabric backplane with other devices on same backplane is difficult and tedious task. In switch there are many stress points, which may cause switch goes down in network. To characterize these stress points, we designed VPX based test card and characterize data plane performance of switch by measuring some parameters and analyzing transmitted and received frames. Also by preparing setup for environmental characterization we can test performance for different environmental conditions. Also using environmental chambers, we characterize for environmental parameters at different ruggedized levels.A