AFDXSwitch

Block Name: AFDXSwitch
Code Location: VisualSim/actor/arch/Buses/AFDX/AFDX_Switch

Table of Content
Description
Block Dependency
Examples
Parameters

Description

VisualSim AFDX modeling library provides the system-level modeling environment to evaluate the performance, power consumption and reliability of this aerospace network protocol. This template is an extension to the Ethernet protocol library and allocates dedicated bandwidth for each node with guaranteeing Quality of Service. The six primary aspects of AFDX include full duplex, redundancy, deterministic response times, high speed performance, switched and profiled network. The library can be connected to the hardware and the software blocks of the architecture library to assemble the full system. The AFDX switch can operate in any topology including a star.

The main elements of AFDX network library are as follows
1. AFDX End-System
2. AFDX Switch
3. AFDX Traffic Generator
4. AFDX Configuration

Each VisualSim AFDXSwitch has filtering, policing, and forwarding functions with more than 4096 Virtual Links. In a network with multiple switches (cascaded star topology), the total number of Virtual Links is nearly limitless. The user can limit the number of Virtual Links that can be handled by each End System. The switch is also non-blocking and the data rates can be specified by each system integrator.
The AFDX libraries of VisualSim supports fault injection to simulate the system under certain components failure, data loss or malfunctioning of devices on the board. An example scenario would be injecting faults to AFDX and A429 package and analyze the impact on network communication. 

AFDXSwitch Block has two redundant Switches that interacts with AFDX End Systems. AFDX Switch will forward the transactions to corresponding end system based on the information provided in Routing Table and Multi-Cast table.

Dependency

AFDXSwitch block must be used alongside with AFDXConfig, AFDXNode and AFDXTraffic Generator blocks. AFDXSwitch requires certain mandatory data structure fields, such as Task_Source, Task_Destination, Task_Type, Task_Size, etc. For ease of use, we have added all required data structure fields in AFX_Traffic Generator block.

Examples

1. AFDX Network with Single Switch (Note: AFDX_Switch by default has two redundant switches, in VisualSim we consider that as a single entiry)

2. AFDX Network with Two Switches

Parameters