ARINC 429 data concentrator

Abstract

The Airbus A320 program introduced the 'fly by wire' concept in commercial transport airplanes. Within this plane for flight management and guidance systems integration, a communication problem had risen, because of the great number of ARINC 429 lines which a computer had to listen to in order to perform its function. This constraint had led to the need for and the design of very compact and powerful ARINC 429 reception units, all of them based on a common architecture using extensively a gate-array-based ASIC called 'SR8A'. This paper presents the hardware architectural concept of ARINC 429 Data concentrators which are used by SEXTANT Avionique Company for both the A320 and A340/330 commercial transport airplanes. In respect to these guidelines, a family of inter-compatible circuits were designed in order to fit a very wide ARINC 429 application panel. Then, the authors present their features and the methodology used during their design.<>