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With more airline passengers
demanding in-flight Wi-Fi, system
designers need to find a smart
solution for migrating on-board
systems to fibre optics. Here
Thomas Heller is account manager,
aerospace and defence, Molex,
surveys the current state and major
trends for aircraft OEMs.
One of the hottest technology trends
relating to cabin electronics in civil
aircraft is creating designs that
accommodate all the passengers
that now want to use their
smartphones, tablets, and laptops
on board. Passengers want, and
will eventually demand, the ability
to recharge their devices as well as
gain Wi-Fi access to stream video,
audio, and data files throughout
the entire flight. Essentially, many
flyers want aircraft to become flying
Internet cafés.
This trend, of course, creates
challenges when it comes to
outfitting aircraft cabins with
modern electronic and electrical
solutions. Size, weight, available
space, power, cost, and vibration
— all of which come at a premium
within aircraft system designs —
must be considered.
To address the challenge, speeds
and bandwidth over copper have
increased dramatically over the last
few years. But with copper, Wi-Fi
access presents what amounts to
an impossible obstacle, especially in
cases where 300 passengers try to
access Wi-Fi all at once.
In addition to ensuring there’s no
interference from the wide variety of
systems on plane airframe systems,
there’s also the issue of sufficient
bandwidth for that number of users,
especially those accessing video and
audio files. Aircraft on-board system
designers are at the tipping point for
switching to fibre optics.
Fibre vs. Copper
With device and connector
manufacturers driving the push to
make photon-to-electron conversion
points as small and as light as
possible, fibre optic interconnects
generate interest for their ability
to perform better than copper in
the critical SWaP (size, weight,
and power) areas. Size wise, fibre
interconnects and cable assemblies
Switching Aircraft Interior Systems to Fibre
Optics
Thomas Heller, Molex
38 l New-Tech Magazine Europe