Search

The increasing complexity and heterogeneity of avionic networks make resource savings a challenging task to guarantee easy incremental design during the long lifetime of an aircraft. In this paper, we focus on the optimization of interconnection devices for multi-cluster avionic networks, called Remote Data Concentrators (RDC), and especially for the CAN-AFDX network. The design of this optimized RDC device consists in implementing frame packing strategies to manage upstream (sensors) flows to improve bandwidth utilization in the AFDX; and Hierarchical Traffic Shaping (HTS) algorithm to control downstream (actuators) flows to guarantee bandwidth isolation on CAN. Schedulability analysis integrating the effects of these new mechanisms is detailed and validated. Furthermore, a heuristic approach to tune the Hierarchical Traffic Shaping parameters within the RDC device is proposed to reduce as much as possible bandwidth utilization in the AFDX, while ensuring flows schedulability. The performance analysis conducted on a realistic avionic case study proves the efficiency of the optimized RDC device to reduce bandwidth utilization in the AFDX, compared to the basic device currently implemented in avionics.

National audience; The increasing complexity and heterogeneity of avionics networks make resource optimization a challenging task. In contrast to many previous approaches pursuing the optimization of traffic-source mapping and backbone network analysis, our work presented herein mainly focuses on the optimization of interconnection devices for multi-cluster avionics networks. In this paper, we introduce an optimized interconnection device, integrating novel frame packing strategies and schedulability analysis to enhance the communications between an AFDX-like backbone network and various peripheral sensor/actuator networks in terms of resource savings. The performance analysis conducted on a representative avionics communication architecture highlights the efficiency of our proposal to save resources particularly consumed bandwidth. These latter is considered as an important feature for avionics applications to guarantee easy incremental design during the long lifetime of an aircraft.

The current avionics communication architecture has recently arisen some limitations for meeting the emerging requirements of new generation aircraft in terms of modularity, weight and integration costs. In order to cope with these limitations, an alternative avionics communication architecture based on a multi-cluster embedded network is proposed in this paper. The critical avionics subsystems still are interconnected via the backbone network AFDX, however the sensors and actuators are grouped to be interconnected via CAN buses, independently of the associated avionics subsystems. The obtained clusters will be interconnected via specific gateways to handle the heterogeneity between the AFDX and CAN buses. This paper focuses first on the relevant aspects of our proposal and the offered real time guarantees required by critical avionics applications. Then, since an efficient bandwidth consumption is inherently important to guarantee an easy incremental design process, an optimized gateway design with a new frame packing strategy is proposed and evaluated in our context.