TTTech Aerospace introduces its TTEEnd System A664 Lab v2.0 card for testing and development of aviation applications

The aerospace sector has very high safety standards that cover all stages of the product lifecycle, in particular for commercial aviation. A smooth transition from initial development to testing and finally flight-grade products is essential for sub-system manufacturers. They need to meet the industry requirements and work cost-efficiently, but also ensure a short-time-to-market. TTTech Aerospace supports these objectives with its next-generation TTEEnd System A664 Lab v2.0 card. This network interface card serves laboratory evaluation, development and testing applications. It brings the newest certifiable Core IP solution from TTTech Aerospace’s flight portfolio to non-flight equipment. It implements DMA engine support to reach an optimized data throughput performance of up to 1 Gbit/s.

Javier Gadea Ezquerra, Product Manager Aviation Products, says the end system card is suited for a wide range of applications and development scenarios: “The TTEEnd System A664 Lab v2.0 provides an affordable and high-performance solution for Deterministic Ethernet evaluation and the early integration phase in aviation projects. It is a versatile solution that can be used by aerospace system developers, TTEthernet® or ARINC A664 part 7 network integrators, as well as research institutions and universities for a wide range of aircraft and rotorcraft programs.”

The TTEEnd System A664 Lab v2.0 is a Deterministic Ethernet evaluation and development platform for aviation applications. It enables Ethernet communication for synchronized and non-synchronized functions, as well as mixed-criticality data streams in distributed systems with performance requirements of up to 1 Gbit/s. Its main benefits are:
Seamless transition from early development into certifiable flight applications

The TTEEnd System A664 Lab v2.0 is based on the DO-254 DAL A certifiable TTEEnd System A664 Core IP Pro and supported by a driver based on TTTech Aerospace’s certifiable DO-178C TTE-COM architecture. This eases the transition from development to flight programs and allows customers to save time, effort, and cost in their aviation projects.

Interoperability with key industry standards

The TTEEnd System A664 Lab v2.0 maintains parity with our own flight grade XMC card, which is MOSA / SOSATM / HOST aligned, and supports three configurable Ethernet-based network traffic classes in parallel on one physical infrastructure (Time-Triggered acc. to SAE AS6802, rate-constrained acc. to ARINC 664 part 7, best-effort acc. to IEEE 802.3). At the same time, it is fully compatible to AFDX®(1) data networks. For a development team which works with several Ethernet-based standards, this reduces complexity and cost.

High-performance data throughput for Deterministic Ethernet testing platforms

The TTEEnd System A664 Lab v2.0 enables data communication rates up to 1 Gbit/s in both transmission and reception (full duplex). This makes it suitable for test setups to evaluate or verify the capabilities of components (e.g., switches) or the network itself. A practical example of this: a switch with a 1 Gbit/s port would usually need ten 100 Mbit/s end system cards to demonstrate routing of the 1 Gbit/s data. Thanks to the high-performance throughput in the TTEEnd System A664 Lab v2.0, only one card is needed to test this type of transmission.

The TTEEnd System A664 v2.0 is available in two product variants, PCIe and XMC. The PCIe variant is particularly suited for PC-based environments and comprises the TTEEnd System A664 Lab v2.0 (XMC) and the XMC to PCIe carrier.