Design and Evaluation of a RISC-V based SoC for Satellite on-board Networking

Abstract

SpaceWire is a communication protocol that has become widely used in spacecraft for connecting instruments to data processors, mass-memory, and control processors. Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have been a popular choice for implementing SpaceWire nodes due to their flexibility to meet unique requirements of each program or product. This paper presents a comparative study of two implementations of SpaceWire nodes, based on two different FPGA technologies, AMD-Xilinx SRAM-based and Microchip (Microsemi) FLASH based. The study compares the resource requirements and estimated power consumption of both implementations, using the same HDL SpaceWire IP core, with the SRAM-based one incorporating a 32-bit Microblaze soft-CPU, and the FLASH based one using a 32-bit RISC-V CPU. The obtained results are compared, and the paper concludes that FLASH-based FPGAs are more suitable for applications that require high reliability, tamper resistance, and fast, reliable restarts. In contrast, SRAM-based FPGAs are preferred in applications that require high performance and reconfigurability. The study shows that both FPGA technologies are capable of implementing SpaceWire nodes effectively and efficiently, and designers can choose the technology that best suits the specific requirements of each project.