A Modular, Scalable Avionics Architecture for Future Exploration Missions

Future manned missions to deep space will require vehicle architectures with higher levels of autonomy and fault tolerance. Moreover, such vehicles will have even greater constraints on size, weight, and power – reducing the potential for sparing and increasing the need for hardware commonality. While classical Ethernet is attractive for its flexibility, high throughput, and widespread availability, it cannot meet the needs of systems requiring strict guarantees regarding successful and timely message delivery. TTEthernet extends classical Ethernet with a decentralized clock synchronization service enabling the deterministic delivery of time-triggered messages. Additionally, it provides two forms of event-driven communication, together enabling mixed-criticality traffic to coexist in the same physical network. This paper explores how TTEthernet technology can be leveraged to simplify the design and integration of distributed spacecraft systems.