A protocol designed for intra-spacecraft impulse radio ultra-wideband communications

Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband (IR-UWB) is a promising technology for intra-spacecraft data communications because of its low complexity, low power, and high bandwidth. A data network based on IR-UWB technology for intra-spacecraft high speed communications was proposed here. A new network protocol referring to the American military data bus standard MIL-STD-1553B protocol was designed to meet the requirements of IR-UWB communications. Time division command/response mechanism was adopted to avoid signal collision in the network protocol. The physical layer, data link layer, network layer and application layer of the new protocol were described in detail. A demonstration of the high speed data network based on IR-UWB was tested and verified by FPGA. It is proved that design of the network protocol is feasible, reliable and flexible.