With the adoption of ARINC818 as the defacto standard for digital video links and data transmission within the Aerospace community, AIM has introduced a powerful new family of ARINC818 Digital Test and Simulation products to aid avionics display developers and aircraft integrators perform testing and verification on such links.

AIM’s ARINC818 test products are designed around the field proven APE-FC-2 PCIe (PCI Express) Fibre Channel Interface offering data rates up to 1GFC.

Marco Maier ARINC818 Product Manager at AIM-GmbH says: ‘Later this year AIM will have the APS-FC-2 (PCI Express) card which supports data rates up to 4GFC and is fully software compatible with the APE-FC-2 card. Both support single or sequential pictures which can be sent in single shot or cyclic mode with software configurable refresh rates. Picture data can be changed or reloaded ‘on-the-fly’ maintaining picture data integrity with the configured refresh rates on the ARINC818 link.

The import of picture data in a Windows BMP/ DIB format for transmission is supported by the software API interface. Another unique feature AIM offers is the ‘Tap Mode’ which allows users to break into an existing connection between a generator and a display, to tap-out the ARINC818 data with no interference of the traffic’.

The Driver Software and Application Programming Interface (API) are bundled in the module price and are compatible with WindowsXP/ Vista/7/8 and Linux. This includes a comprehensive set of ARINC818 transmitter and receiver functions.

AIM’s powerful and optional PBA.proTM Databus Test & Analysis Software with the ARINC818 Upper Layer Protocol option provides a simple to use and interactive GUI, which can even be controlled, customised and automated using Python Scripting support.

The scalability of the PBA.proTM means provisions for ‘pure’ ARINC818 based test, simulation and analysis solutions (including all FC Layer 2 capabilities) right up to a heterogeneous avionics databus test system with a seamless integrated ARINC818 capability.