Network layer support in SpaceFibre protocol

The SpaceFibre standard has appeared relatively recently. Also SpaceFibre standard supports several “Quality of Service” mechanisms. It includes best effort, bandwidth reserved, scheduled and priority based qualities of service. It is implemented by means of virtual channels. Standard does not fully describe network layer in the latest version (ECSS Draft F3). The rules for transferring data at the network layer also affect the quality of service. In this paper we present analysis and an implementation of the SpaceFibre network layer. The switch matrix´s channels quantity connected to port (connection point) is one. Low priority packet transmission can be interrupted, if a packet with a higher priority is received. Interruption rules will be described, data transmission latency characteristics and performance will be evaluated. Analysis and modeling of the proposed network level implementation will be demonstrated. Data packets of different sizes were used during simulation. Number of virtual channels is 4 for the research.