TSN-Based Zonal Architecture for Digital Backbone

Modern aircraft have an established need for a high-performance, open standards solution to interconnect increasing number of digital components including sensors, actuators, controllers, processors, displays and data concentrators. The aircraft can be envisioned as a distributed system requiring highly available, reliable, and deterministic communication network - often termed as digital backbone - for safe operation. This paper introduces a new zonal architecture for aerospace onboard networks using Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN). TSN is an open standard based deterministic Ethernet solution for mission and safety critical networks in aerospace industry that truly meets the Modular Open Standards Approach (MOSA) requirements. This paper also presents a reference implementation of the proposed digital backbone architecture using commercial-off-the-shelf hardware from multiple vendors. Experimental data from laboratory evaluation shows stability, performance, and reliability that meets or exceeds the needs of aerospace use cases. The proposed next generation digital backbone provides significant size, weight, and power savings as well as enables hardware and software modularity using open standards. A specific use case of such a digital backbone is the US Army's Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program, but the proposed architecture is generally applicable to all aircraft networks.