Two years of effort have gone into the development of a high-speed, fiber-optic local area network suitable for aerospace applications. In tailoring this system (Star*Bus) to aerospace applications, particular attention has been paid to system redundancy, size, power, and weight. The result is a 100 Hb/s, autonomously redundant network which incorporates a dual star topology and a robust protocol
The network achieves robustness through the use of a dual-mode protocol that incorporates the advantages of both contention (Ethernet) and deterministic (token-passing) types of protocol. In this manner, it achieves the short network delays under light network loading possible with a contention protocol, while retaining the efficiency and deterministic characteristics of a token-passing protocol at high network loads.
The initial network performance has been evaluated using an eight-node system and redundant 20×20 optical couplers. Network delays correlated well with predicted values. Throughput has been measured at greater than 95 Hb/s.