An avionic gigabit ethernet network

Adapting commercial standards to aviation provides a number of advantages over implementing specialist solutions. There has been a steady increase in the capabilities of Ethernet, particularly a 100-fold increase in available bandwidth and the introduction of extra capabilities such as Class/Quality of Service (CoS/QoS) and Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs.) Ethernet is non-deterministic and is not error-resistant and so there have been attempts to overcome these shortcomings. BAE Systems has developed the Deterministic Ethernet-based Fault Tolerant NETwork (DEFTNET) concept. Unlike Avionics Full-Duplex Switched Ethernet (AFDX), this represents a set of techniques that require no specialised hardware or software components in the end systems. This paper summarises recent efforts to identify suitable components to demonstrate an optical, deterministic Ethernet network suitable for avionics use, including legacy, electrical, systems.