Fly-by-wire system on Legacy 450 and 500 jets uses TTTech's Time-Triggered Protocol technology for flight control computer

Posted by John McHaleVIENNA, Austria, 26 July 2011. BAE Systems officials selected Time-Triggered Protocol (TTP)-based commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices from TTTech for the flight computers in Embraer's fly-by-wire system for Legacy 450 and 500 business jets.Parker Aerospace supplies the digital fly-by-wire system, which includes elevator, aileron, and rudder actuators; a flight control computer, and remote electronic units. BAE Systems engineers are developing the flight control computer."We have been evaluating TTP for several years and finally decided to use it in the Legacy 450/500 fly-by-wire programs. TTP, due to its features and cross-industry usage, is the most promising, highly reliable and advanced solution for our flight control computer," says Andy Buckley, program manager at BAE Systems. "TTTech technology and products based on TTP allow us to build a highly modular, scalable and cost-efficient solution for fly-by-wire applications." TTP is a Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) standard with the designation SAE AS6003 "TTP Communication Protocol." It can support as much as 25 megabits per second per channel, offers higher bandwidth compared to CAN, MIL STD-1553 and ARINC 429, TTTech officials say. TTP also is designed as a modular distributed platform technology with additional functions for system health monitoring, enhancing fault isolation, and redundancy management. TTP products from TTTech have been certified to DO-254 and DO-178B up to level A on several programs.