Fault tolerant smart transducer interfaces for safety-critical avionics applications

Smart transducer interfaces are promising technologies for the next generation safety-critical avionics applications. In this paper we present two fault tolerant smart transducer interface architectures based on the IEEE 1451 standard. FPGA is the hardware platform that has been selected for the development of the proposed architectures. The first interface architecture is a single-chip solution while the second one is dual-chip. Reliability and safety analysis for both architectures is also carried out. A special attention is paid to the description of the single-chip interface implementation using the Spartan-6 LX45T Xilinx FPGA. The resulting prototype is used to validate fault tolerance mechanisms and real-time performance of the single-chip interface.

[1]  Jean-Pierre Garcia,et al.  Braking Systems with New IMA Generation , 2011 .

[2]  Peter Y. K. Cheung,et al.  Fault tolerant methods for reliability in FPGAs , 2008, 2008 International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications.

[3]  L.H. Eccles.  The need for smart transducers: an aerospace test and evaluation perspective , 2008, IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine.

[4]  Farokh B. Bastani,et al.  High-Assurance Reconfigurable Multicore Processor Based Systems , 2011, 2011 IEEE 13th International Symposium on High-Assurance Systems Engineering.

[5]  Philippe Goupil,et al.  AIRBUS state of the art and practices on FDI and FTC in flight control system , 2011 .

[6]  Pascal Traverse,et al.  AIRBUS A320/A330/A340 electrical flight controls - A family of fault-tolerant systems , 1993, FTCS-23 The Twenty-Third International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing.

[7]  Raul Barbosa,et al.  Layered Fault Tolerance for Distributed Embedded Systems , 2008 .

[8]  C.T. Mata,et al.  A Kennedy Space Center implementation of IEEE 1451 networked smart sensors and lessons learned , 2006, 2006 IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[9]  Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli,et al.  Fault-tolerant platforms for automotive safety-critical applications , 2003, CASES '03.

[10]  Jan Popelka,et al.  Performance of smart sensors standards for aerospace applications , 2012 .

[11]  Sarita V. Adve,et al.  Architectures for online error detection and recovery in multicore processors , 2011, 2011 Design, Automation & Test in Europe.

[12]  Yvon Savaria,et al.  A System Architecture for Smart Sensors Integration in Avionics Applications , 2012 .

[13]  Francisco J. Cazorla,et al.  Towards improved survivability in safety-critical systems , 2011, 2011 IEEE 17th International On-Line Testing Symposium.

[14]  Kristina Forsberg.  Design Principles of Fly-By-Wire Architectures , 2003 .

[15]  Manel Sghairi Haouati.  Architectures innovantes de systèmes de commandes de vol , 2010 .

[16]  Yvon Savaria,et al.  A hardware prototype for integration, test and validation of avionic networks , 2013, 2013 IEEE/AIAA 32nd Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC).