A manufacturer of passenger aircraft in-flight entertainment and internet connectivity systems was building an Ethernet switch to manage traffic between the main controller and the in-seat computers. The system had to be compact and rugged. Thus, the company’s product design consisted of a rugged enclosure with MIL-TDL-38999 style connectors mounted on a PCB. The customers were seeking a solution where they could plug the Ethernet switch directly onto their connector board to eliminate internal cables and improve ruggedness and reliability and make the system as compact as possible. As this solution called for a custom design, the customer was also seeking to minimise the cost of the custom engineering effort.
Switch module simplifies solution design effort
Diamond Systems was able to deliver a perfect-fit solution for this project. To reduce development time and cost for a custom product, an EPSILON Ethernet switch module was used as the core of the system. These switch modules provide an almost complete Ethernet switch in a rugged, compact module measuring only 84 x 55 mm. The core switching circuit, control processor, and embedded software are built into the board, and only the ‘final inch’ of connectors and magnetics is needed to complete the design. By using a switch module, a custom Ethernet switch design can be implemented quickly and easily, since 90% of the effort is already complete and available as an off-the-shelf component.
Diamond’s EPSM-10GX Ethernet switch module was selected for this project. The EPSM-10GX module includes 24 x 1 Gbps Ethernet ports for device connectivity plus 2 x 10 Gbps Ethernet ports for aggregation and upstream linking. Two embedded software packages are available: a Layer 2+ switching application and a Layer 3 routing application.
The Epsilon switch module requires a baseboard to complete the circuit with magnetics and I/O connectors. It uses a pair of high-speed board-to-board connectors with 28 Gbps rating to carry all signals and power between it and the baseboard. The customer’s connector board, on the other hand, contained only the rugged 38999 I/O connectors and no electronics. A transition board was therefore needed to complete the circuit between the two boards.
Diamond designed a custom carrier board to fill this need. This transition board contained the SFP+ sockets to support the 10G fibre connections for the switch as well as power and serial port connectors; the latter is used for ‘out of band’ configuration and management of the switch.
By using our EPSILON compact Ethernet switch module and a custom baseboard, Diamond was able to deliver a quick-turn, compact, economical, and rugged custom switch for this new on-board entertainment and internet service system. This application illustrates the benefit of using an Ethernet switch module to reduce development time, cost, and risk for Ethernet switches, and Diamond’s custom product development capabilities.
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