Design of polymer optical fiber data link for aircraft applications using systems engineering method

The design of a data network based on polymer optical fibers (POF) for aircraft applications involves safety-critical risks due to the unknown functional and performance requirements for the reliability and fail safe operations of the physical layer of the POF network. The physical layer of a POF network consists of entirely different components compared to the existing silica fiber-based physical layer. As seen in the history of avionics, a large number of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies were modified to meet aircraft system standards rather than developing new components and systems on their own [1]. This strategy saves time and costs of development in the initial stage but in the prolonged use of these components might increase the maintenance costs as the aircraft system components are designed for thirty years or more. In order to reduce the maintenance costs and ensure the supportability and availability of the system components the COTS technologies need to be thoroughly validated against the rigorous aircraft system requirements in terms of their functionality, performance and operating environment. One of the major challenges in the validation is the prediction of the failure modes and the reliability of the link design before it is implemented. This paper discusses the implementation of a systems engineering method to overcome this challenge and to suggest design changes, if necessary, of the POF COTS components for the aircraft data link.