April 14, 2005 – THE arrival of high-speed data satcoms in civil aviation has prompted a rush to introduce onboard systems able to get the most out of the plentiful bandwidth on offer. The latest is a particularly neat and versatile unit from Seattle-based Pentar Avionics.

Pentar’s new JetLAN AR230 Airborne Router is designed as a simple, reliable way to share the broadband connections available from services like Connexion by Boeing, ARINC SKYLink and Inmarsat’s Swift family among multiple users simultaneously. Not only does AR230 share and route the bandwidth among simultaneous phone and data users, but it can also operate as a hub for both wired and wireless local area networks on the aircraft. It thus eliminates the need for additional external networking peripherals such as switches and wireless access points.

A single 6lb, 2MCU package houses a nine-port Ethernet switch, an IEEE 802.11b/g wireless access point, ISDN and avionics interfaces (including optional ARINC 429 for access to data from aircraft systems such as GPS), and extensive networking input/output. AR230 can thus act as the hub of a network combining PCs, the aircraft’s avionics systems, and satellite and terrestrial telecommunications. It is compatible with today’s Ku-band Connexion and SKYLink and L-band Inmarsat Swift64, and is ready for Inmarsat’s 432kbit/sec SwiftBroadband.

The effectiveness of onboard communications systems can be further boosted by AR230’s extensive internal non-volatile memory and computer resources, which can be used to support applications such as data compression and least-cost routing.

While the AR230, like the rest of Pentar’s JetLAN range, is based on PC technology, it has been designed, tested and built to full avionics certification and reliability standards, including DO-160D, DO-178 and DO-254.

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