Possible impacts of VHSIC on MIL-STD-1553B data transmission management

High performance integrated circuit technologies allow for dramatic improvement in speed and reduction in size of the integrated circuits. This fact results in the possibility to pack in a denser way the computing and decision making functions of the avionics systems. Nevertheless it is still necessary to connect together the various sytem components, spread through the airframe, by means of an interfunction data transmission system. For these reasons the application of the new technologies to a MIL-STD-1553B data transmission system is considered. In particular the data management task allocated to the Bus Controller is described in four increasing levels of complexity, ranging from the minimum requirement to an "expert" function including an high degree of configurability. The performance obtainable by implementing the functions in the current or new technologies, and with two different architectural solutions, are measured or estimated. The comparison among the obtained results shows that the new technologies not only improve the performances of the data transmission system, but also allow to include an higher degree of intelligence in the function, extending in this way the application of MIL-STD-1553B to future advanced avionic systems.