Something about that makes me think translation error or marketing. I can’t imagine the “drive by x” (“fly by x”) systems being so high bandwidth.
Agreed. The signal wire while being large antenna for EMI isn’t a problem at all. Filters, rugged transceivers, chokes and your problem is solved there.
EMP is a threat where you are able to load all traces on the PCB and in the chips themselves with varying potentials instantly.
We’re used to securing transients on the signal lines. Not on the 10mm trace from chipA to chipB.
Other than EMI, and weight of wire, what could
possibly be the reason for the fiber optic “fly
by light” system? All of the user controls are
way “slow” anyway.
Your modulator/demodulator went from being a simple transceiver chip to a whole laser module. Fiber optics handle cuts and “wire” damage poorly compared to copper. It isn’t as easy repair or maintain, even a simple continuity test now requires specialized equipment and you can’t probe but rather need to plug in at each point, ok but what if your issue is the connector? Fiber is always point A to point B, which doesn’t mean you can’t HUB or DaisyChain or STAR, but isn’t as easy as some copper systems like CAN, FLEX, and maybe others that can just splice together. Double any complexity because these systems are redundantly run.
I’m not sure how big an issue is with EMI. Nor do I know the bandwidth. It’s just that the most complex vehicles today, they’re most well under 800kbps for the chassis bus (assuming some vehicle at 1Mpbs and 80% load). Not sure if anyone is actually making use of production 4-8Mbps systems yet. So I assume that rugged Ethernet for data haul and CAN for sensors would work as well as it is now for jets.
They must be doing some serious data transfers I don’t understand.
They do very thorough HFSS simulations for fighter jets, having RF noise immunity without having to use heavy shielded wiring is a great benefit.
Splicing can be rough, but it's by no means impossible. With the right equipment, you can expect <0.3dB loss from a splice. That's not a lot in these very short links.