Deterministic passive optical networks for aerospace communication

Next-generation aerospace intra-communication systems require network architectures that ensure high bandwidth, deterministic performance, and efficient resource utilization, addressing the limitations of traditional protocols, which suffer from bandwidth constraints and high deployment costs. Passive Optical Networks (PON) represent a promising alternative due to their high bandwidth, low latency, and energy efficiency. Unlike conventional Ethernet-based solutions that rely on active switching nodes for synchronization and traffic management, PON operates using passive optical splitters, significantly reducing power consumption while maintaining deterministic performance. Initially developed for cost-effective and scalable broadband access, PON technology has gained increasing attention in industrial automation due to its reliability and ability to support ultra-low latency communication. Its point-to-multipoint architecture enables scalable deployment while ensuring the stringent timing precision required for real-time applications. Recent advancements in deterministic scheduling, dynamic bandwidth allocation, and synchronization mechanisms have further extended its applicability to time-sensitive industrial environments, including robotics, process control, and motion automation. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has recognized this potential, promoting its adoption through the Fifth Generation Fixed Network (F5G) initiative, which introduces enhanced features such as PON slicing and edge computing. Building on these developments, this work investigates the adoption of PON for aerospace applications, where deterministic performance, power efficiency, and scalability are critical. The passive nature of the architecture ensures predictable propagation delays, a crucial factor for real-time intravehicle communications in space. Integrating PON within space launch vehicles offers several advantages: its passive operation minimizes power consumption, a key consideration in energy-constrained environments, while synchronized polling mechanisms in modern PON implementations enable deterministic traffic scheduling, ensuring reliable data transmission without complex active network management. Moreover, the increasing bandwidth capacity of PON supports the growing data demands of aerospace systems, including telemetry, guidance, and real-time control. We explore how modern scheduling techniques, originally developed for industrial networks, can be adapted to meet the stringent latency constraints of aerospace environments, formulating an ad-hoc optimization problem for scheduling. Our analysis shows that PON-based architectures can support deterministic communication with stable latency across different topologies and traffic loads, confirming their potential as an efficient and scalable solution for next-generation aerospace networks.