AFDX (Avionics Full-Duplex Switched Ethernet) standardized as ARINC 664 is a major upgrade for safety-critical applications in avionics systems. Worst-case delay analysis of all the flows transmitted on the AFDX network is mandatory for certification reasons. Different approaches have been proposed for end-to-end (ETE) delay upper bound, such as network calculus and trajectory approach, but these methods still introduce some pessimism in the computations and overestimate the exact worst-case delay of the flows. In addition, the existing trajectory approaches may underestimate the exact worst-case delay of the flows for some corner cases. In this article, we revised the trajectory approach to make the flow analysis more accurate for the computation of the worst-case ETE delay. The results had been shown that the worst-case delay analysis of an AFDX network can be improved by using our revised trajectory approach.
INDEX TERMSAircraft, analytical model, Ethernet networks, real-time systems, upper bound. GUANGSHAN LU received the Ph.D. degree from Beihang University, Beijing, China, where he has been a Professor with the School of Electronics and Information Engineering. His research is focused on avionics systems integration and fire control system. HUAGANG XIONG received the Ph.D. degree in communication systems from Beihang University, Beijing, China, in 1998, where he has been a Professor with the School of Electronics and Information Engineering. His main fields of interests are communication network theory and avionics system and synthesis.