SpaceWire Conformance Tester Mk2

The SpaceWire Conformance Tester Mk2 connects to a SpaceWire device and, through the host software, executes a variety of tests to check the unit under test’s (UUT) compliance to the SpaceWire Standard. Over 55 tests are conducted across the following levels:

• Link / bit-level: Link initialisation testing, disconnection timeout measurement, link start-up speed and waveform analysis, link shut-down analysis and simultaneous D/S transition detection
• Exchange-level: Validate the response to parity and escape errors in ErrorWait, Ready, Started, Connecting and Run along with the response to FCT, NCHAR and time codes in those states. Estimates of the 12.8 µs Started / Connecting timeouts can be made
• Credit-level: Validate the UUT response to excess FCTs and NCHARs, empty packet testing and monitoring UUT signals for credit errors
• Time-codes: Determine whether time-codes are accepted, probe the response to valid and invalid time-codes and measure the UUT time-code generation frequency
• Empty packets: Investigate the effect of sending empty EOP and EEP packets
• Packet-level: Test the transmission and reception of packets with different types of UUT: loop-back, data-sink, data-source, command-sender and command-receiver
• Waveform trace: A waveform display of the UUT data and strobe signals sampled over a period of 40 µs at 1.4 ns intervals is provided

The software makes it easy to select which tests should be run. With each test, expected and achieved results are displayed, including a link to the appropriate clause of the SpaceWire Standard to dramatically reduce the time spent debugging the UUT. The SpaceWire Conformance Tester Mk2 can also be used as a high speed packet generator, and one of the SpaceWire links can act as a data / time-code sink or loop-back.