Frame packing strategy within gateways for multi-cluster avionics embedded networks

The current avionics communication architecture has recently arisen some limitations for meeting the emerging requirements of new generation aircraft in terms of modularity, weight and integration costs. In order to cope with these limitations, an alternative avionics communication architecture based on a multi-cluster embedded network is proposed in this paper. The critical avionics subsystems still are interconnected via the backbone network AFDX, however the sensors and actuators are grouped to be interconnected via CAN buses, independently of the associated avionics subsystems. The obtained clusters will be interconnected via specific gateways to handle the heterogeneity between the AFDX and CAN buses. This paper focuses first on the relevant aspects of our proposal and the offered real time guarantees required by critical avionics applications. Then, since an efficient bandwidth consumption is inherently important to guarantee an easy incremental design process, an optimized gateway design with a new frame packing strategy is proposed and evaluated in our context.