Performance analysis of TDMA-based wireless network for safety-critical avionics

Abstract

The opportunities and challenges for using wireless interconnects for safety-critical avionics have been discussed in our previous work. A Wireless Avionics Network (WAN) has been proposed based on hybrid architecture UWB and Switched Ethernet with adequate reliability and security mechanisms to increase scalability and reduce electromagnetic susceptibility (figure 1). Furthermore, a TDMA-based protocol was considered to guarantee a contention free access and enhance communication predictability. However, the use of wireless technologies may increase the communication latencies due to transmission errors, and real time constraints have to be verified. In order to deal with the worst case performance analysis of such network, an appropriate schedulability analysis based on Network Calculus formalism is presented in this paper and obtained results for a realistic case study are discussed herein.