Virtual MIL-STD-1553

Abstract

MIL-STD-1553B is a widely popular, standard multiplex data bus that has been employed with great success in a variety of aerospace and defense systems. However, use of real 1553 data busses within simulation and development environments can be unnecessarily restrictive. To use a real bus, expensive cards must be purchased and additional cabling must be used to connect the various system components. In these environments, it would be ideal if existing commodity hardware and communications infrastructure could be utilized to interconnect the simulation or development components. To realize this goal, the MIL-STD-1553 data bus must be virtualized, making the data bus's protocol independent of the communication mechanism used to transmit information. The idea is to move functionality from hardware into software, in essence, create a completely software-based 1553 card simulator (i.e. a virtual 1553 card). The author will refer to this simulation as virtual 1553 throughout this paper. Virtual 1553 can provide a great deal of flexibility and cost savings to developers of systems or simulations utilizing the 1553 data bus. At present, a prototype of this technology has been used to replace physical 1553 connections between the astronauts' command and control software and emulated flight computers in an International Space Station (ISS) simulator developed by United Space Alliance. Use of virtual 1553 has led to reduced deployment costs for the simulator, as neither 1553 cards nor cabling are required and existing hardware is used instead for the 1553 simulation.