Protocol design for wireless extension of embedded networks: Overview of requirements and challenges

The available standards of protocols for embedded networks, e.g., SpaceWire have been designed with the consideration of wired link connections. But in practice there are many use cases and applications that would be better to address by a wireless connection. For example, it might be useful to install temperature or some other sensor at the edge of satellite´s solar panel, so that the core nodes of the embedded network can regularly receive information from them. But providing access to such sensors by means of traditional wired links is a complex technological task. Moreover use of wired link in this scenario would be very expensive and not reliable. In this paper we make an overview of use cases that drive demand for wireless extension of the embedded networks. The paper summarizes studies on general requirements and key challenges related to deployment of the wireless extension to the embedded networks. The main focus of the study is on collecting and analyzing requirements and restrictions that affecting design of the datalink and network layers of the embedded networks´ protocols. As a reference technology for this study we selected SpaceWire standard. The paper defines a scope of the corresponding problem domain and proposes ways to address the identified problems. The paper is a product of a technology exploration project, which is target to result in a list of recommendation for the wireless extension of the SpaceWire protocol and propose a set of questions plus the general scope definition of the initial tasks for a working subgroup on designing wireless protocol extension of SpaceWire.