A new high speed data bus is urgently needed in military aircraft to offset the dramatic increase in dedicated wiring harnesses and to accommodate the need for greater information flow, resource sharing and fault tolerance.
To satisfy that need the Air Force has awarded a High Speed Bus Technology Development contract to develop and validate complete high speed digital bus network designs including terminals, bus couplers, and media operating at 50 Megabits per second.
A special feature of this linear token passing bus is that the basic terminal is compatible with both fiber optic and wire media.
This paper describes methods for collecting user requirements, establishing acceptable criteria, and developing a simulation tool that will play those requirements against protocol alternatives to achieve the desired results.