PON WDM network architecture for the future aircraft cabin
Résumé
In the cabin of a modern aircraft, heterogeneous data from different systems are transported using separate and dedicated communication infrastructures. Moreover, the predominant copper-based networks in civil aircraft cabins have become more complex, heavy and expensive. Such architectures are not very scalable and require high maintenance costs with multi-skilled support teams. Therefore, leveraging fibre optic network technology for aviation applications represents one of the most innovative technological developments in the aeronautics industry to increase the network modularity, flexibility and scalability. Indeed, these systems implement all-optical scalable and reconfigurable components that can support very high-capacity point-to-multipoint architectures. In addition, optical networks technology provide a resilient infrastructure over the aircraft life (30 years) and offers the best guarantees to reduce the power consumption, weight1 and overall carbon footprint of the network. Within this frame, the main objective of this work is to identify, describe and analyze an aircraft intra-cabin optical network, based on combined PON and WDM architectures. This solution is relevant in terms of data rate, bandwidth, multiplexing of heterogeneous signals from a large number of data sources and offers flexible and protocol-independent communication links, making it a suitable alternative to aircraft systems. The pro- posed network configuration is analyzed through two options whose performance are evaluated using photonic simulation of realistic optical components, with data rates of 10Gbit/s and under environmental aeronautical constraints, e.g. [-40°C to + 85°C] temperature range and vibration bandwidth up to 2000Hz (DO-160 standard).