Simulation for end-to-end delays distribution on a switched Ethernet

AFDX (Avionics Full Duplex Switched Ethernet, ARINC 664) used for modern aircraft such as Airbus A380 represents a major upgrade in both bandwidth and capability for aircraft data networks. Its reliance on Ethernet technology helps to lower some of the implementation costs, though the requirement for guaranteed service does present challenges to system designers. Thus, the problem is to prove that no frame will be lost by the network (no switch queue will overflow) and to evaluate the end-to-end transfer delay through the network. Several approaches have been proposed for this evaluation. Network calculus gives a guaranteed upper bound on end-to-end delays, while simulation produces more accurate results on a given set of scenarios. Main problem of simulation is to find a representative subset among the huge number of possible scenarios. In this paper, we propose an original and promising approach to drastically reduce the number of possible scenarios. We illustrate this approach on a realistic industrial network configuration.