ARINC ( Aeronautical Radio Inc.

) The ARINC 429 data bus has proved to be one of the most popular bus standards used in commercial aircraft. The ARINC 429 specification defines the electrical and data characteristics and protocols that are used. ARINC 429 employs a unidirectional data bus standard known as Mark 33 Digital Information Transfer System (DITS). Messages are transmitted in packets of 32-bits at a bit rate of either 12.5 or 100 kilobits per second (referred to as low and high bit rate respectively). Because the bus is unidirectional, separate ports, couplers and cables will be required when an LRU wishes to be able to both transmit and receive data. Note that a large number of bus connections may be required on an aircraft that uses sophisticated avionic systems. ARINC 429 has been installed on a wide variety of commercial transport aircraft including; Airbus A310/A320 and A330/A340; Boeing 737, 747, 757, and 767; and McDonnell Douglas MD-11. More modern aircraft (e.g. Boeing 777 and Airbus A380) use significantly enhanced bus specifications (see page 40) in order to reduce the weight and size of cabling and to facilitate higher data rates than are possible with ARINC 429. Despite these moves to faster, bidirectional bus standards, the ARINC 429 standard has proved to be highly reliable and so is likely to remain in service for many years to come. Electrical characteristics ARINC 429 is a two wire differential bus which can connect a single transmitter or source to one or more receivers or sinks. Two speeds are available, 12.5 k bps (bits per second) and 100 kbps. The data bus uses two signal wires to transmit 32-bit words. Transmission of sequential words is separated by at least four bit times of NULL (zero voltage). This eliminates the need for a separate clock signal and it makes the system self-clocking. The ARINC 429 electrical characteristics are summarised below: Voltage levels: +5V, 0V, 5V (each conductor with respect to ground) +10V, 0V, 10V (conductor A with respect to conductor B) Data encoding: Bi-Polar Return to Zero Word size: 32 bits Bit rate (high): 100K bits per second Bit rate (low): 12.5K bits per second ARINC 429 data word format In most cases, an ARINC message consists of a single 32-bit data word . The 8-bit label field defines the type of data that is contained in the rest of the word. ARINC data words are always 32 bits and typically include five primary fields, namely Parity, SSM, Data, SDI, and

Label R C enti n numbers t e bits from 1 (LSB to 32 (MSB different data formats is possible.

A number of

Fi ure Basi AR

C 429 data word

Bits are transmitted starting wit bit 1 of t e label and t e final bit transmitted is t e parit bit. The standard specifies the use of odd parit (the parit bit is set to 1 or reset to 0 in order to ensure that there is an odd number of 1s in each transmitted word). It is worth noting that the label is transmitted with the most significant bit (MSB) first while the data is transmitted least significant bit (LSB) first. The Label field is an octal value that indicates the t pe of data (e.g. airspeed, altitude, etc) that is being transmitted. The SDI field is used when a transmitter is connected to multiple receivers but not all data is intended for used by all the receivers. In this case each receiver will be assigned an SDI value and will look only at labels which match its SDI value. While the specification calls for SDI 00 to be universally accepted this may not actually be the case. The Data field contains the actual data to be sent. The principal data formats defined in the specification are Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) which uses groups of four bits to contain a single decimal digit and B R which is binary coding. For both of these data types, the specification defines the units, the resolution, the range, the number of bits used and how frequently the label should be sent. The SSM field is used for information which assists the interpretation of the numeric valuein the data field. Examples of SSM values might be North, East, South, West, Plus, Minus, Above or Below. The P field is the parity bit. ARINC 429 uses odd parity. The parity bit is the last bit transmitted within the data word. The ARINC 429 binary specification calls for the use of twos complement notation to indicate negative numbers (see page 18) and this binary format is known as BNR.