Miniaturized general-purpose architecture for I/O signals handling in aerospace applications

Typically handling of input and output (I/O) is one of the most complex and costly parts of an electronic control system. As signal characteristics vary significantly among applications, the handling of the signals becomes unique to the application. In aerospace applications the I/O design tends not to be portable among different aircraft, or even among the different control units on the same aircraft. With the need for a new I/O design for each control unit, the handling of I/O becomes a major cost factor. This paper presents a novel general-purpose architecture that enables the reuse of I/O designs across multiple applications and facilitates the handling of a wide variety of signal characteristics. The architecture unifies the interface to both signals and data bus so that the same design can fit different applications. Many of the architectural building blocks are integrated into a miniaturized implementation in order to reduce the cost, weight and volume for the aircraft system. The design of a novel chip for re-configurable signal conditioning and conversion is also discussed