Recent IEEE 802 developments and their relevance for the avionics industry

The need for high data-rates enabled the adoption of Ethernet in avionics systems and, indeed, today Ethernet according to the ARINC 664 part 7 standard is used in prominent airplanes such as the Airbus A380 or the Boeing 787 as well as several other aerospace programs. Meanwhile, Ethernet continues to evolve also in its native standardization body, the IEEE. In particular, Ethernet grows in two directions, speed and services, and we consider two specific developments to be of particular interest to the avionics industry. First, the 1000BASE-T1 PHY Task Force (IEEE P802.3bp) and the IEEE 100BASE-T1 Task Force (IEEE 802.3bw) are standardizing Ethernet PHYs considering usage in harsh environments like industrial or automotive at Gbit/sec and 100 Mbit/sec transmission speeds. Secondly, the time-sensitive networking task group (IEEE 802.1 TSN) is currently standardizing basic forms of time-triggered communication to minimize the transmission latency and jitter of Ethernet. In this paper we give an overview of the current developments in IEEE 802.3bp, IEEE 802.3bw and IEEE 802.1 TSN and formulate a perspective on the future use of Ethernet in avionics systems.