RTX ARINC 429 PCI Card

The RTX/PCI Multi Channel card is a single card solution for the user with high throughput requirements. It is a half size card which fully conforms to the PCI bus standard and is compatible with any modern PC.The RTXPCI card supports up to a total of 30 ARINC 429 channels which could be all receivers, all transmitters, or any combination in between.The RTXPCI is supported by our powerful Windows API DLL (other software interfaces are also available) for easy integration into your system.

The RTXPCI Card design
The RTXPCI429 card uses a field programmable gate array (FPGA) to achieve the required throughput and support this number of channels. In addition the RTXPCI429 card comes equipped with up to 2Mbyte of RAM to buffer hundreds of thousands of Arinc words. The FPGA performs all ARINC 429 functions including: scheduling of all transmissions, label filtering, ultra high speed FIFO storage, and storage to RAM.

The RTXPCI429 is memory mapped into the host address space for ease of data transfer from/to the host CPU via the PCI bus. The API handles all communication with the host CPU, which simplifies the software development effort.

The card has a 62 pin connector (in a standard DB37 housing) to interface with the ARINC 429 signals. A total of 60 pins are available for configuration. Each ARINC 429 receiver and each transmitter requires 2 pins for a total of 30 channels.

The Transmitters
The RTXPCI card supports up to 30 transmit channels. All channels are totally independent, can run simultaneously, and can be independently configured for Low/Hi speed, and an appropriate parity bit (either Odd parity or Even parity) or can be configured to generate no parity bit (ARINC 575 mode). The scheduling of transmission is handled by the hardware off loading the host CPU from stringent timing constraints. The scheduler supports the transmission of individual labels (to a resolution of 500 micro seconds and at rates of 1 per second and up to full channel capacity) and streams.

The ARINC429 Receivers
The RTXPCI429 card supports up to 30 receiver channels. All channels are totally independent, run asynchronously, and simultaneously. The receivers can be setup to receive either high speed data or low speed data. ARINC data words are captured in a ultra high speed FIFO and then transferred by the FPGA to on board RAM to achieve full throughput of 30 simultaneously received labels. This design guarantees reliable data capture and delivery. The on-board RAM will buffer hundreds of thousands of ARINC words to ease response time requirements on the host's software.

The API
RTX delivers (at no additional cost) an extensive Windows API to control and program the RTXPCI429 card. The API can also be delivered for other operating systems.

The GUI
RTX also sells VORTEX, a Windows based Graphical User Interface (GUI) which is perfect for most applications. The Vortex GUI provides access to all transmit and all receive functions of the RTXPCI429 card, in a Windows environment. In addition to simplifying transmission and reception of data on any channel, the VORTEX GUI also can perform Engineering Units Conversion of data to be transmitted or received and real-time storing of incoming data onto disk, for later playback and analysis. The receive portion of VORTEX permits display of the received data in multiple formats: each ARINC word can be displayed on its own line, or only the most recently received Arinc word per label can be displayed.

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