Development of workspace and algorithms for testing SpaceWire onboard equipment

For a long time, the foreign space industry has been using one of the most advanced and actively developing technologies for transmitting information on board a spacecraft – SpaceWire. This technology provides high-speed transmission of large amounts of information, creation of a unified infrastructure for high-speed data processing to connect sensors, data processing system elements and mass memory blocks. In SpaceWire is gradually being introduced and used on promising spacecraft. To verify the compliance of the onboard equipment of such devices with the requirements of the SpaceWire ECSS-E-ST-5012C Rev.1 standard, there is a need to develop a workplace described in this article. The workplace is designed so that SpaceWire onboard equipment can be connected to it and tests can be run that check certain parameters of information exchange regulated by the standard. The article presents the general structure of the workplace, as well as a description of each of its elements separately, together with a description of their functionality. The article also describes the developed testing algorithms. Among them, it is possible to distinguish a check for the compliance of the bit error coefficient with the required value, a check for the support of the header removal method by SpaceWire switches, as well as a check for compliance with the requirements for the RMAP and STP-ISS transport protocols. The algorithms of these tests are presented in the form of flowcharts and a detailed text description. The tests themselves are implemented in the form of program code in the C language. As a confirmation of the correctness of the developed tests, practical testing of SpaceWire devices was carried out, among which two payload boards for the NORBY spacecraft can be distinguished, as well as an ultra-large integrated circuit 1931KH014 of a programmable switch for SpaceWire networks. A brief description of the testing devices used in the work is given in the form of a presentation of their functionality applicable to the testing workplace being developed.