AFDX (Avionics Full DupleX Switched Ethernet, ARINC 664) utilized in Airbus A380 and Boeing 787 represents a major upgrade in both bandwidth and capability; however some legacy systems are difficult to connect into the AFDX bus smoothly. A low cost AFDX end system based on SOPC (System On a Programmable Chip) is presented. A Xilinx Spartan 3AN FPGA is employed to build the whole system; and then a dedicated reduced Ethernet MAC controller for AFDX end system is designed; a MC8051 open core microcontroller is employed as the system controller and protocol processing unit. The whole design costs small FPGA resources and the experiments show that the designed AFDX end system works robustly and correctly.
The Overview of Avionics Full-Duplex Switched Ethernet
