4Links tutorial on SpaceWire Test in November 2011

4Links will run a tutorial on SpaceWire Test on the day before the International SpaceWire Conference 2011.

Several people have asked us to move the tutorial to later in the day so that they can go on the tour of Southwest Research Institute and then come to the tutorial. So the tutorial is now from 4:00pm to 6:00pm. The tutorial will be followed by an informal reception, to which all conference and exhibition delegates are welcome, from 6:15pm to 7:15pm.

This tutorial will be held in the Marriott Plaza Hotel, San Antonio, TX, USA - the conference hotel of the International SpaceWire Conference. It is scheduled to start at 4:00pm on the afternoon of Monday 7th November 2011, which is just before the start of the SpaceWire Conference, and it will be followed by an informal reception for all ISC conference delegates from 6:15pm to 7:15pm.

There is no charge for these events, but to assist our planning, please register for the tutorial by emailing info@4Links.co.uk with your contact / affiliation information. Tutorial places will be limited, so book early! All ISC delegates will be welcome at the reception without the need to pre-register.

The aim of the tutorial is to show how 4Links' SpaceWire test equipment can be exploited at various stages of a space mission:

• At the Feasibility Study stage, experimental designs are exercised and their performance is evaluated. Interfaces between development computers and SpaceWire components will be required, as well as SpaceWire simulators (e.g. routers and RMAP emulators).
• At the Project Definition stage, specific designs are implemented, and these prototypes are examined in great detail. Precisely measuring router latencies and response times of instruments might be important to you. The ability to inject fault conditions into your SpaceWire devices will also aid testing.
• At the Build stage, equipment must be critically tested against its specification and against those of the devices that it will be connected to. Capturing all of the traffic in a SpaceWire network will provide an archive record of the unit-level tests.
• At the Integration stage, networks of SpaceWire-connected systems must be repeatedly checked for interoperability, and issues rapidly identified and resolved. Analyser tools will help to identify the causes of problems, and SpaceWire recorders again will provide a record of the testing.
• In the Post-Launch stage, many suppliers and prime contractors retain their test sets, to simulate and analyse unexpected behaviours of the satellite in flight. Our rack-mounted test equipment is robust and easy to secure.

Since most 4Links SpaceWire test units are built around a common hardware platform, it is usually possible to re-configure them through the insertion of extra firmware modules, and therefore to extend their utilisation across all of these phases of the mission lifecycle, which makes them particularly cost-effective.

We plan to demonstrate a number of SpaceWire test scenarios that illustrate these mission requirements and show how our SpaceWire test equipment provides comprehensive diagnostics and an unrivalled instrumentation of timing in SpaceWire networks. The breakdown of the tutorial will be:

• Introduction to 4Links and its test equipment.
• Using the test equipment, together with software supplied by 4Links. We will show how you can answer several versions of the question "Does your design work?". This will include simple examples of simulating an RMAP device, initial testing of a breadboard (including debug techniques), moving on to a few of the characterizing and qualifying tests that will be needed later.
• Writing your own test software, using the 4Links C API. We will answer the question "Can I write my own software?". This includes how application-specific tests can be written using the C API, again with some simple examples.
• Integration support, SpaceWire monitoring, recording, and analysis. We will show how you can answer the questions "Do the devices work together in a system?", "How can I record the SpaceWire traffic from lots of SpaceWire links?" and "How can I analyze the recording?". We will do this with a brief recording followed by analysis of a pre-recorded session.
• Wrap up ...
•                 ... and then you are invited to join 4Links and other conference delegates for an informal reception (not a meal but a couple of drinks and one or two bites of food) in the courtyard outside the tutorial room, from 6:15pm to 7:15pm.

There will be opportunities during the tutorial and subsequent reception to talk with 4Links staff and to ask them for advice about your SpaceWire designs and testing requirements.

To whet your appetite, here are two presentations of data recorded by our Multi-link SpaceWire Recorder:

Low-level diagnostics with SpaceWire waveform capture

High-level analysis of the traffic on an entire SpaceWire network

4Links will also have a stand in the exhibition at the International SpaceWire Conference 2011 and we will present a paper there on our deterministic timing analysis of Virtual SpaceWire Networks.

We will also run a version of this tutorial in Japan in November 2011, in the week after ISC. Do let us know if this would interest you.