A program was completed with joint industry and government funding to apply fiber optic technologies to aircraft. The technology offers many potential benefits. Among them are increased electromagnetic interference immunity and the possibility of reduced weight, increased reliability, and enlarged capability by redesigning architectures to use the large bandwidth of fiber optics. Those benefits can be realized if fiber optics meets the unique requirements of aircraft networks. Many independent efforts have been made in the development of the systems, known as cable plants, to link opto-electronic components. The FLASH program built on that work. Over the last two years, FLASH expanded on the cable plant efforts by building components based on a cohesive aircraft plant system concept. The concept was rooted in not just optical performance, but also cost, manufacturing, installation, maintenance, and support. To do that, the FLASH team evaluated requirements, delineated environmental and use conditions, designed, built, and tested components, such as cables, connectors, splices and backplanes for transport aircraft, tactical aircraft, and helicopters. In addition, the FLASH team developed installation and test methods, and support equipment for aircraft optical cable plants. The results of that design, development, and test effort are reported here.
Aircraft optical cable plant: the physical layer for fly-by-light control networks
Fly-by-Light III ; 1996 ; Denver,CO,United States
Proc. SPIE ; 2840
1996-10-14
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
The Aircraft Optical Cable Plant Program: The Physical Layer for Fly-By-Light Control Networks
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