Influences of data bus protocols on an aircraft elevator flight control subsystem

A major trend in modern aerospace and automotive systems is to integrate computing, communication and control into different levels of the vehicle and/or its supervision. A well fitted architecture adopted by this trend is the common bus network architecture. The presence of the communication network in a control system introduces new types and characteristics to be considered at design time of a control system. This paper describes: the initial part of an extensive work to investigate the influences of types and characteristics of data bus protocols on an aircraft fly-by-wire (FBW) networked control subsystem looking for parameters, tools and a methodology to design life-critical systems based on databuses, or NCS. In this paper we describe the investigation of the influences of sharing bus types (event or time triggered) on a real time control system through simulations (based on a MatLab/Simulink toolbox called TrueTime). To compare their effects, we chose the control area network bus (CAN bus) protocol where the medium access control is event- triggered; and the time triggered protocol (TTP) where the medium access control is time-triggered.