ARINC 429, "Mark33 Digital Information Transfer System," is also known as the Aeronautical Radio INC. technical standard for the predominant avionicsdata bus used on most higher-end commercial and transport aircraft. It defines the physical and electrical interfaces of a two-wire data bus and a data protocol to support an aircraft's avionics local area network.
Technical description
Medium and Signaling
429 is a data transfer standard for aircraft avionics. It uses a self-clocking, self-synchronizing data bus protocol. The physical connection wires are twisted pairs carrying balanced differential signaling. Data words are 32 bits in length and most messages consist of a single data word. Messages are transmitted at either 12.5 or 100 kbit/s to other system elements that are monitoring the bus messages. The transmitter constantly transmits either 32-bit data words or the NULL state. A single wire pair is limited to one transmitter and no more than 20 receivers. The protocol allows for self-clocking at the receiver end, thus eliminating the need to transmit clocking data. ARINC 429 is an alternative to MIL-STD-1553.
The ARINC 429 unit of transmission is a fixed-length 32-bit frame, which the standard refers to as a 'word'. The bits within an ARINC 429 word are serially identified from Bit Number 1 to Bit Number 32 or simply Bit 1 to Bit 32. The fields and data structures of the ARINC 429 word are defined in terms of this numbering. While it is common to illustrate serial protocol frames progressing in time from right to left, a reversed ordering is commonly practiced within the ARINC standard. Even though ARINC 429 word transmission begins with Bit 1 and ends with Bit 32, it is common to diagram and describe ARINC 429 words in the order from Bit 32 to Bit 1. In simplest terms, while the transmission order of bits for a 32-bit frame is conventionally diagrammed as this sequence is often diagrammed in ARINC 429 publications in the opposite direction as When the ARINC 429 word format is illustrated with Bit 32 to the left, the numeric representations in the data field generally read with the Most significant bit on the left. However, in this particular bit order presentation, the Label field reads with its most significant bit on the right. Like CAN Protocol Identifier Fields, ARINC 429 label fields are transmitted most significant bit first. However, like UART Protocol, Binary-coded decimal numbers and binary numbers in the ARINC 429 data fields are generally transmitted least significant bit first. Some equipment suppliers publish the bit transmission order as The suppliers that use this representation have in effect renumbered the bits in the Label field, converting the standard’s MSB 1 bit numbering for that field to LSB 1 bit numbering. This renumbering highlights the relative reversal of "bit endianness" between the Label representation and numeric data representations as defined within the ARINC 429 standard. Observe how the 87654321 bit numbering is similar to the 76543210 bit numbering common in digital equipment; but reversed from the 12345678 bit numbering defined for the ARINC 429 Label field. This notional reversal also reflects historical implementation details. ARINC 429 transceivers have been implemented with 32-bit shift registers. Parallel access to that shift register is often octet-oriented. As such, the bit order of the octet access is the bit order of the accessing device, which is usually LSB 0; and serial transmission is arranged such that the least significant bit of each octet is transmitted first. So, in common practice, the accessing device wrote or read a "reversed label". Newer or "enhanced" transceivers may be configured to reverse the Label field bit order "in hardware."
Word format
Each ARINC 429 word is a 32-bit sequence that contains five fields: The image below exemplifies many of the concepts explained in the adjacent sections. In this image the Label appears in red, the Data in blue-green and the Parity bit in navy blue.
Labels
Label guidelines are provided as part of the ARINC 429 specification, for various equipment types. Each aircraft will contain a number of different systems, such as flight management computers, inertial reference systems, air data computers, radar altimeters, radios, and GPS sensors. For each type of equipment, a set of standard parameters is defined, which is common across all manufacturers and models. For example, any air data computer will provide the barometric altitude of the aircraft as label 203. This allows some degree of interchangeability of parts, as all air data computers behave, for the most part, in the same way. There are only a limited number of labels, though, and so label 203 may have some completely different meaning if sent by a GPS sensor, for example. Very commonly needed aircraft parameters, however, use the same label regardless of source. Also, as with any specification, each manufacturer has slight differences from the formal specification, such as by providing extra data above and beyond the specification, leaving out some data recommended by the specification, or other various changes.
Protection from interference
Avionics systems must meet environmental requirements, usually stated as RTCA DO-160 environmental categories. ARINC 429 employs several physical, electrical, and protocol techniques to minimize electromagnetic interference with on-board radios and other equipment, for example via other transmission cables. Its cabling is a shielded 70 Ω twisted-pair. ARINC signalling defines a 20 Vp differential between the Data A and Data B levels within the bipolar transmission, and the specification defines acceptable voltage rise and fall times. ARINC 429's data encoding uses a complementary differential bipolar return-to-zero transmission waveform, further reducing EMI emissions from the cable itself.
Development tools
When developing and/or troubleshooting the ARINC 429 bus, examination of hardware signals can be very important to find problems. A protocol analyzer is useful to collect, analyze, decode and store signals.
