Communications link design and analysis of the NEXTSat-1 for SoH file and mission data using CAN bus, UART and SerDesLVDS

Abstract

The communications link in a space program is a crucial point for upgrading its performance by handling data between spacecraft bus and payloads, because spacecraft's missions are related to the data handling mechanism using communications ports such as a controlled area network bus (CAN Bus) and a universal asynchronous receiver and transmitter (UART). The NEXTSat-1 has a lot of communications ports for performing science and technology missions. However, the top level system requirements for the NEXTSat-1 are mass and volume limitations. Normally, the communications for units shall be conducted by using point to point link which require more mass and volume to interconnect. Thus, our approach for the novel communications link in the NEXTSat-1 program is to use CAN and serializer and deserializer low voltage differential signal (SerDesLVDS) to meet the system requirements of mass and volume. The CAN Bus and SerDesLVDS were confirmed by using already defined communications link for our missions in the NEXTSat-1 program and the analysis results were reported in this study in view of data flow and size analysis.