SAFDX: deterministic high-availability ring for industrial low-cost networks

Abstract

There is a growing trend for real-time Ethernet in nearly all industrial branches. In aviation industry Avionics Full Duplex Switched Ethernet (AFDX) was standardized to meet specific requirements of regulation authorities for safety critical systems (e.g. determinism and link availability). While safety critical aircraft control systems deploy AFDX there is no common solution for less restrictive cabin networks with realtime demands. Simply employing the as is AFDX technology to the cabin seems over the top due to tremendous hardware costs. This paper introduces the idea of a software enabled AFDX ring, where switching functionality is shifted to end-systems. The topology is based on commercial off-the-shelf hardware, thus, not requiring highly specialized expensive hardware components. We show that achieving deterministic bounds on latency is possible for our proposed ring solution.