An interconnected multi-plane multi-stage fault-tolerant on-board switching fabric

The harsh space radiation environment compromises the reliability of an on-board switching fabric by leading to cross-point and switching element (SE) faults. Different from traditional fault-tolerant switching fabrics only taking cross-point faults into account, a novel Input and Output Parallel Clos network, referred to as the (p₁,p₂)-IOPClos, is proposed to tolerate both cross-point and SE faults. In the (p₁,p₂)-IOPClos, there are p₁ and p₂ expanded parallel switching planes in the input and output stages, respectively. The multiple input/output switching planes are interconnected through the middle stage to provide multiple paths in each stage by which the network throughput can be increased remarkably. Furthermore, the network reliability of the (p₁,p₂)-IOPClos under the above both kinds of faults is analyzed. The corresponding implementation cost is also presented along with the network size. Both theoretical analysis and numerical results indicate that the (p₁,p₂)-IOPClos outperforms traditional Clos-type networks at reliability, while has less implementation cost than the multi-plane Clos network.