Simulation and test system for at least one item of equipment on an AFDX network

• US 20050220029A1
• Filed: 03/17/2005
• Published: 10/06/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 04/02/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Airbus Operations SAS (Airbus SE)
• Original Assignee: Airbus France
• Inventors: Cloury, Emmanuel, Calluaud, Jean-Marie
• Granted Patent: US 7,406,050 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/241
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2012/4028 the transportation system being an aircraft
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/145 involving simulating, designing, planning or modelling of a network
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/50 Testing arrangements

Abstract

The invention relates to a system for simulating at least one item of equipment missing on an AFDX network and for testing such a network comprising at least one real item of equipment, which uses non-specific computer means including:

• • a simulation layer (21) controlling at least one Ethernet controller (22),
  • at least one commercially available Ethernet switch (42) to switch data.

Claims

1. System for simulating at least one item of equipment missing on an AFDX network and for testing such a network comprising at least one real item of equipment, which uses non-specific computer means including:

a simulation layer controlling at least one Ethernet controller,

at least one commercially available Ethernet switch to switch data.

2. System according to claim 1, in which the non-specific computer means include:

a processing device including Ethernet connections means, means of sequencing sending of Ethernet frames capable of placing Ethernet frames at the right time to satisfy network requirements, and means of receiving Ethernet frames,

at least one Ethernet switch including means of making a connection between a 1 Gigabit link and a 100 Gigabit link capable of absorbing indeterminate time differences.

3. System according to claim 2, in which the processing device includes formatting means capable of formatting simulation data to obtain a frame, and deformatting means capable of receiving and formatting AFDX data.

4. System according to claim 1, in which in a multi-end system simulation, the Ethernet switch is configured to segregate different sub-networks and to route outgoing Ethernet frames to ports connected to the network and incoming Ethernet frames to the processing device.

5. System according to claim 1, in which each Ethernet switch is such that:

it complies with the requirements of standard IEEE 802.3 that defines the Ethernet frame and the physical layer,

it has one 1 GBit/s port and two 100 Mbits/s ports for smoothing,

it has one 100 Mbits/s port for each item of equipment to be simulated,

it routes messages from the destination MAC address,

it manages the total number of “

multicast”

MAC addresses that corresponds to the number of virtual links,

it prevents routing of a message if the message has already been routed once,

it can be remote configured by configuration of a static table.

6. Aircraft simulator using a simulation system according to any one of the above claims including:

a simulation workshop with the function of hosting avionics models or functions and communicating with other software sets through a data flow,

a data zone in which the contents of avionics information in AFDX messages are available,

an input/output engine awakened by a timer and including formatting, deformatting and frame sequencing functions.