Fibre-optic network architectures for on-board digital avionics signal distribution

Continued progress in both civil and military radio-frequency (RF) digital avionics applications is overstressing the capabilities and reliability of existing RF communication networks based on coaxial cables on board modern aircrafts. Future avionics systems will require high-bandwidth on-board communication links that are lightweight, immune to electromagnetic interference, and highly reliable. Fibre-optic networks can meet all these challenges in a cost-effective manner. Recently, on-board fibre-optic communication systems, where a fibre-optic network acts like a local area network (LAN) for digital data communications, have become a topic of extensive research and development. However, modem digital avionics systems require a system capable of transporting microwave and millimeter-wave RF signals that carry digital data on board an aircraft. Such optical networks transporting RF signals are completely different from the digital fibre-optic communication systems. Recent advances in optoelectronics technology, including linear optoelectronic devices and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), have opened a number of possibilities for designing on-board fibre-optic networks, including all-optical networks for digital avionics RF signal communication. The objective of this paper is to present a number of optical network architectures for transmitting RF signals carrying digital data in an aircraft. In this paper, we investigate a number of different approaches, including all optical architectures, for building an optical network using fibre-optic transmission of on-board VHF and UHF RF signals. The relative merits and demerits of the network architectures are discussed, and the suitability of the architectures for particular applications is presented. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.