PTP Enabled Network for Flight Test Data Acquisition and Recording

Large-scale data acquisition and recording systems have long sought to benefit from the bandwidth, scalability, and low-cost of Ethernet and Internet protocol (IP). However, these systems´ requirement for reliable correlation of data with time is impeded by Ethernet´s inherently non-deterministic transit delay. With the advent of precision time protocol (PTP), these challenges can now be overcome by deploying synchronized data sources that timestamp data at the source. Furthermore, data producers and consumers constitute a multicast data distribution model, where a single data source is observable by any interested subscribers. This paper details our work for Boeing´s 787 which deployed these technologies to build an innovative system capable of providing gigabit data throughput with sub-microsecond synchronization.