New Monitoring Paradigms for Modern Avionics Buses

Abstract

In modern aircraft there is a proliferation of avionics buses. Some of these buses use industry wide standards such as ARINC 429 or AFDX while others are based on proprietary protocols. For many of the newer bus types there can be thousands of parameters on each bus. In a distributed data acquisition system the flight test engineer needs to record all of the data from each bus and monitor selected parameters in real time. There are numerous different approaches to acquiring, transmitting and recording data from avionics buses. In modern FTI there is also a proliferation of standards for recording and transmission including IRIG 106 Chapter 10, iNET and IENA. In this paper some common approaches to bus monitoring are compared and contrasted for popular buses such as ARINC 429, AFDX and Time Triggered Protocol. For each bus type the best approach is selected for reliable acquisition, speed of configuration, low latency telemetry and compact recording which is optimized for playback.