FlexRay with polymer-clad-silica fiber as transmitting medium in aviation electronics

Current aircrafts have a metal body with resulting advantages and disadvantages. To lighten aircrafts, the new generation will be built with carbon fiber fuselage. Therefore, they will loose a lot of their protection against lightning and cosmic radiation. To avoid problems in signal transmission we are analyzing several possible solutions. One of these solutions is the replacement of the electrical copper layer by polymer-optical fibers (POF) or polymer-clad-silica (PCS) fibers and the application of the bus protocol FlexRay, which is widely used in the automotive industry.