Forward End-to-End Delay for AFDX Networks

Abstract

Packet switched networks and message multiplexing have been a major upgrade for industrial systems communications. In the avionics domain, this evolution was brought by the introduction of avionics full duplex switched ethernet (AFDX). Guaranteed upper bounds of end-to-end delays for messages transmitted over an AFDX network are mandatory for certification reasons. In this article, we present the forward end-to-end delay analysis (FA), which is scalable to both large and heavily loaded configurations. A formal proof of FA is detailed and the approach is compared with alternative methods (network calculus and the trajectory approach) on two types of AFDX configurations (including a real industrial architecture).