Model-Based Design and Evaluation of Fault-Tolerant Fibre-Optical Networks for Avionics

Abstract: Aircrafts need to provide and support a certain number of systems and functions today, in order to make the flight more comfortable and to avoid information overload for pilot and crew. Entertainment services, like HD video streaming as well as in-flight internet access or television are important for airlines to position themselves in the market. As a result for aircraft manufacturers, the demand of entertainment systems, improved flight controls, and monitoring systems is increasing steadily. On the other hand, adding more and more independent communication systems leads to higher cost and weight. An integration of some links would be beneficial. Higher bandwidth and data rates are required to integrate the increasing number of systems and functions. The existing avionic networks, which are mostly based on copper wiring, are not able to meet future bandwidth requirements. Therefore new network architectures are necessary to control the increasing information flow inside of an aircraft. Hence, fibre optics becomes progressively important to aviation, to enable the installation of new avionic systems in the future. Avionic network architectures based on optical components need thus to be developed, tested and evaluated. To study fibre optic technologies within the scope of aviation, Model Based Engineering (MBE) is an essential tool. The objective of the paper is to show how optical network architectures are being designed for reliability and evaluated based on a functional layer modelling approach, by using the simulation tool MLDesigner. We report on intermediate results from the ongoing EU-funded project DAPHNE. As a result, network architectures and optical components can be evaluated against their reliability requirements. A selection of different network design options are generated and analysed