Broadband optical network design for the future aircraft cabin

Abstract

Bringing an optical network infrastructure into civil aircraft cabins is one of the major technological evolutions of the aeronautic industry. During the last decade, copper networks installed in aircraft cabins have proven to be unable to support new technologies and services throughout the life of the aircraft. With severe constraints and high maintenance costs in the aeronautical field, there is also a significant increase in aircraft weight and hence fuel consumption with the current cabin infrastructure. In order to overcome these problems while offering the best trade-off in terms of heterogeneous service transport, we propose therein various optical network architectures for future civil aircraft cabins combining point to multi-point time division multiplexing transport over passive optical networks with wavelength division multiplexing technology. These architectures offer promising solutions for commercial aircraft with capacities up to about 500 seats, while allowing for a significant decrease in operating costs and maintenance/installation time, thus facilitating the intervention on the aircraft.