Industrial, NASA, and DoD spacecraft designers have recognized the advantages of using fiber optic components and networks for their internal satellite data handling needs. Among the benefits are the total elimination of cable-to-cable and box-to-box EMI; significant size, weight and power reduction; greater on-orbit and integration and test flexibility and significantly lower integration and test
costs. Additionally, intra-satellite data rates of 1 to 10 Gbps appear to be an absolute requirement for a number of advanced systems planned for development in the next few years. The only practical
way to support these data rates is with fiber optics.
Space Photonics and the University of Arkansas have developed fiber optic components (FireFiberTM) and networks that are designed specifically to meet these on-board, high data rate needs using NASA approved materials, packaging processes, and approved radiation tolerant devices. This paper will discuss recent developments in photonic components for spaceborne networks.
Industrial, NASA, and DOD spacecraft designers have recognized the advantages of using fiber optic components and networks for their internal satellite data handling needs. Among the benefits are the total elimination of cable-to-cable and box-to-box EMI; significant size, weight and power reduction; greater on-orbit flexibility, simplified integration and test (I&T), and significantly lower I&T costs. Additionally, intra-satellite data rates of 1 to 10 Gbps appear to be an absolute requirement for a number of advanced systems planned for development in the next few years. The only practical way to support these data rates is with fiber optics. Space Photonics and the University of Arkansas have developed fiber optic components (FireFiberTM) and networks that are designed specifically to meet these on-board, high data rate needs using NASA approved materials, packaging processes, and approved radiation tolerant devices. This paper discusses issues relevant to these components and networks.
Optical Networks Inc. has developed and demonstrated a set of space-flight worthy, 12-channel fiber optic transmitter and receiver modules capable of providing data bandwidths up to 1 Gbps. This is accomplished using radiation tolerant commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) optical and electronic components. The parallel spaceborne fiber optic data bus (SFODB) implementation uses ten out of the available twelve fiber optic channels in the parallel fiber optic transmitter (PFOTX) and the parallel fiber optic receiver (PFORX) to implement a byte wide ring bus. The two spare fibers are used to implement a 2 by 10 redundancy configuration. The components were developed under a NASA/GSFC Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
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