New optical fiber data buses for avionics applications

The key techniques which can be used to implement new avionics optical fiber data buses for aircraft and spacecraft applications are investigated. Several new optical modulation schemes for avionics optical data buses are proposed which can efficiently overcome the difficulties in recognizing the correct states of an active transmitter at the output of optical receivers. The feasibility of such modulation schemes is demonstrated. The author then introduces an advanced concept, broadband integrated digital avionics information exchange networks (B-IDAIENs) for future avionics applications, on which the communication efficiency, flexibility, and capacity are much higher than those on the current avionics data buses. In order to implement B-IDAIENs, supporting techniques, such as wavelength-division multiplexing/wavelength-division multiple access and optical Benes networks, are proposed, and the related optical components are also discussed