Avionics interface unit - at the core of next generation avionics

The small aircraft transportation system (SATS) is a concept developed and propagated by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its government and research partners like the National Consortium for Aviation Mobility (NCAM) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The fundamental premise behind the SATS program is to develop an air transportation system targeted to improve the utilization of all the small airports across North America by introducing technology concepts for automated landing procedures and sequencing of aircrafts inside the self controlled area (SCA) around the airports. The avionics interface unit (AIU) is a core component of such a SATS system providing interfaces to other on-board systems like the VHF digital link (VDL) mode 4 radios, universal access transceiver (UAT), the guidestar, the electronic flight bag (EFB), and the conflict detection and alerting unit (CD&A). This paper describes the services provided by the AIU in context of the SATS architecture and also discusses the applicability of such an intelligent, rule-based software unit for next generation multi-mode, multi-function digital avionics.