Improving AFDX end-to-end delays analysis

Abstract

The AFDX (Avionics Full DupleX Switched Ethernet) is the backbone network of most modern civilian aircraft. For certification reasons, a guaranteed upper bound has to be determined on the end-to-end delay for all transmitted flows. Several approaches have been designed in order to analyze such delays. In this paper, we focus on the Forward End-to-End delays Analysis (FA). This method is based on real-time scheduling results. Our goal is to propose an improvement, that reduces the pessimism of the computed bounds, compared to earlier versions of the method. The improvement relies on the way the serialization of packets sharing a common link is taken into account. We also propose a comparative analysis on a simple configuration with two other methods (Network Calculus and the Trajectory approach).