Fiber optic sensor interface standardization

The need for a new avionic interconnection scheme that can provide superior performance, installability and maintainability as compared with copper has become evident. Fiber optics, which has been proposed for this role, is expected to improve environmental immunity, decrease system weight, and increase bandwidth. It has also been suggested that sensors based on fiber optics can offer significant advantages in aerospace applications. Realizing these advantages is a difficult challenge because mature sensing technologies have done a good job at reasonable cost. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that a wide variety of aircraft electrical sensors can be addressed by a few standard interfaces. Therefore, future fiber optic sensor suites will also need to be interrogated through only a few standard interfaces, and standardization of the fiber optic sensor interface will be a primary issue in furthering fiber optic sensing technology for aerospace applications. This paper discusses the fiber optic sensor standardization process underway in the Avionic Systems Division of the Society of Automotive Engineers.