FlexRay in aerospace and safety-sensitive systems

The FlexRay field bus has potential for integrating existing networks and as a shared local sub-system network in the next generation of airplanes - leveraging a low-cost, dependable bus designed for the automotive domain. Herein, we present an overview of FlexRay and investigate FlexRay´s dependability for use as a field bus in the aerospace domain. FlexRay supports all major requirements for integrating systems on a single network, if controllers are deployed with a guardian to achieve good hardware fault coverage. Despite including a guardian, some vulnerability may remain, such as software-induced failures and physical layer properties.