Optical Control Network for Avionics Applications Using a WDM Packet Ring

We propose aviation real-time adaptive ring (AVATAR) as a potential solution for the integrated communication infrastructure for future aero-engine control systems. AVATAR features an Ethernet-over-WDM (wavelength-division multiplexing) architecture. It employs reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) as node technology. Compared with existing serialized data bus, e.g., time-triggered protocol (TTP), AVATAR exploits multi-wavelength and spatial reuse properties of an optical WDM ring through sophisticated packet scheduling. To quantitatively evaluate the advantages over existing avionic networks, and to understand the architectural parameters of AVATAR, optimal scheduling methods using mixed integer linear programming (MILP), as well as a simple, near-optimal heuristic, are presented. Numerical results demonstrate the superiority of AVATAR, with a simple two-channel configuration more than doubling the capacity of TTP.