Bob Pickles
SBS Technologies

This white paper provides an overview of the AFDX communications protocol past, present and future. AFDX is the recent replacement technology for ARINC 429. The gradual move to Ethernet and distributed computing in commercial and military aerospace projects has hinted for many years at the eventual development of AFDX. However, it was not until ARINC 664 Part 7 was issued on June 27, 2005 that AFDX was formally defined as a standard. ARINC and the AEEC, working with the industry, created a deterministic protocol for real time application on Ethernet media, which is now recognized by most of key aerospace players as ARINC 664 Part 7 or AFDX.