ARINC 429
November 27, 2020 11:05 AM
• Most commonly used in civilian avionics
• Developed from ARINC-419
• Mark 33 DITS Specification
• provides cross-manufacturer interoperability between functional units
• ARINC - Aeronautical Radio, Inc. - comprised of airlines, aircraft manufacturers and avionics equipment manufacturers as
corporate shareholders
• Point to point bus - each transmitting device should have direct connection with one or more receivers
○ Can have only one transmitter or source in a bus
○ Uni-directional data flow - simplex
○ Serial bus
○ Uses twisted shielded pair data bus - supports up to 20 receivers/sinks in a single bus
○ Bidirectional transmission will require two channels or buses
○ star or bus-drop topology - most common config
○ Each LRU may contain multiple transmitters and receivers communicating on different buses
○ Provides highly reliable data transfer due to simplex comm
○ Receivers continuously monitor for relevant data without acknowledgement of receipt of the data
• ARINC 429-15 - current specification published in 1995
○ Part 1 addresses the buses physical parameters, label and address assignments, and word formats
○ Part 2 defines the formats of words with discrete word bit assignments
○ Part 3 defines link layer file data transfer protocol for data block and file transfers
○ defines both the hardware and data formats
• Uses 32 bit words
○ Each word represents an engineering unit (eg. Latitude, altitude, longitude etc)
Protocols Page 1
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○ Labels - uses octal format
Labels defined for each equipment ID
Label 377 can be used to send equipment ID
Label for a particular equipment ID is different from other equipment IDs - i.e. labels are reused by among
equipment
○ SDI - if connected to multiple receivers, can be used for individually addressing them
Can be used for data if not used for addressing
○ Data - uses several formats for coding - Binary, BCD, Discrete, ISO Alphabet No.5 for Alphanumeric data
Label defines which format to be used
Lower order bits may be ignored if all bits not needed - defined by significant bits
Binary and BCD may use remaining bits as discrete if they are not using all the bits
Bit 29 is the sign bit in binary coding
Units and range are defined for each label for a particular equipment ID
Scaling is used for adjusting resolution
○ SSM - Sign Status Matrix (2 bit excluding sign bit, else 3 bit)
To indicate it the transmitted data is valid - 11
Can be used to show that the data is not the latest one or the data is corrupt
2 bits for Status
1 bit for sign of the data
○ Parity - ODD parity is used
• Works at two speed modes
○ High speed - 100 khz - 10 us per bit - 40 us b/w words
○ Low speed - 12.5 khz - 80 us per bit - 320 us b/w words
○ At a time both the receiver and transmitter should work at the same speed mode
○ Sequential words are separated by at least 4-bit times of null or zero voltage - eliminates need for clock sync
• Each label has predefined transmit frequency/interval as per specification
○ Even if no new data is available, the label should be transmitted at this frequency - else receiver will malfunction
○ Transmit interval is defined as a range of min and max values
○ Typically ranges from 25ms (40 hz) to 1s (1 hz)
○ Some static info like flight no will be send only once
• Uses return to zero coding for bits - Bipolar return to zero coding
○ Two wire differential signal with second wire complement of the first
○ During time between words, both wires be zero volts
○ +10V for Logic 1 and -10V for Logic 0
Protocols Page 2
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• Active and passive devices
○ Active - the one who sends data
○ Passive - only receives the data
• Simple and inexpensive
○ Simpler software implementation since no collision and data loss
○ Not suitable if multiple devices wants to communicate with each other as wiring becomes complex
• Binary Example
Protocols Page 3
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• BCD Example
Protocols Page 4
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• Heavy data transfer
○ Receiver may acknowledge data receipt through handshake
○ Implements two way comm format using two channels
Protocols Page 5