Upper bound computation for buffer backlog on AFDX networks with multiple priority virtual links

National audienceIn recent avionics systems, AFDX (Avionics Full Duplex Switched Ethernet) is the network used to replace the previously deployed point-to-point networks. In AFDX networks, nodes are not synchronized and therefore data contention repeatedly occurs at the switches output ports. AFDX switches implement output buffers on each output port to address the data contention issue. Considering the safety critical application of AFDX networks, overflow of these buffers must be avoided at all cost to prevent data loss. In this paper we consider AFDX networks that allow for the classification of traffic into more than two priority levels. We present a novel method to compute an upper bound for the backlog of each priority buffer of each output port on a AFDX network with multiple priority traffic