Designing and analyzing a SpaceWire router IP for soft errors detection

SpaceWire (SpW) is a well know communication standard platform proposed by European Space Agency (ESA). Due to its inherent properties of fault-tolerant and high-throughput, it is extensively used in avionics and satellite applications. When more than two SpW nodes communicate, a SpW Router is used. Such routers can be implemented in ASICs or in programmable devices. In order to perform fault tolerance experiments and since was not possible to find an open source of SpW Router, in this paper we present an open VHDL implementation of this router. Simulation was performed in order to validate the system, and synthesis results for ASIC and FPGA are presented. Finally, in order to analyze the SpW router behavioral when soft errors happen, a fault injection campaign was implemented and results were presented.