SAFEbus (for avionics)

The Airplane Information Management System (AIMS) for the Boeing 777 wide-body engine will be the first highly integrated avionics system for commercial transport. A description is given of the backplane bus, called SAFEbus, that provides communications of all data among the line replaceable modules (LRMs) in the AIMS cabinets. SAFEbus consists of two self-checking buses. The overriding goal in the design of SAFEbus has been to prevent unintended and undetected interactions among the integrated avionics functions and to control complexity so that airplane certification is straightforward. SAFEbus is slated to become the first standard backplane bus for commercial avionics, having been accepted as the draft for ARINC Project Paper 659.<<ETX>>