A High Speed Virtual Channel Data Transfer Method For Spacecraft Application

Virtual channel communication is a commonly used technology in spacecraft to transfer platform engineering data and high speed scientific data from payloads such as synthetic aperture radar or hyper spectral camera. FIFO type buffer has been widely applied in virtual channel data transfer owing to its simple interface. But the control logic of FIFO can be disturbed by single event upset in space radiation environment and that is unrecoverable unless reset. The characteristic of only once read in FIFO also brings inconvenience to some signal processing applications onboard. In this paper a new virtual channel buffer design method based on multi-partition of dual port RAM is proposed and the partitions control algorithm is presented. This method introduces an autonomous rotation mechanism among the internal RAM partitions and provides simple write and read ports equivalent to a single RAM block for user. Virtual channel data units with various characteristics can be transferred continuously through the new-designed buffer in real-time, and multiple reading of data is supported. The buffer discards short-term disturbing input data and can rapidly recover from single event upset error automatically. The method is proved effective and reliable by simulation work and experiment test in an advanced orbiting system based on FPGA implementation.