Towards an adaptive network centric distributed time- and space partitioned platform architecture

This paper describes the advantages of the additional QoS of the SAE AS6802 Time-Triggered Ethernet open standard for space applications. It will give examples why a technology based on Ethernet, todays mostly used communication protocol based on the IEEE802.3 standard provides advantages for future spacecraft applications. It will further present the advantages of the static time-triggered traffic class with respect to verification and validation of the overall system compared to protocols relaying on best effort communication with events triggered by the applications. It will further present the advantages of combining the time and space partitioned operating system with a partitioned communication network for future spacecraft architectures based on the open modular avionics for space (OMAC4S) platform.