Aeronautical Radio, Incorporation (ARINC) is the leading provider of transport communications and systems engineering solutions for five major industries (aviation, airports, defense, government and transportation) since 1929. ARINC has installed computer data networks in police cars and railroad cars and also maintains the standards for line-replaceable units. It is headquartered in (established 2003) for the Asia Pacific region.

= History =

ARINC, as it is known today, was incorporated in 1929 as Aeronautical Radio, Incorporated. It was chartered by the Federal Radio Commission (which later became the Federal Communications Commission) in order to serve as the airline industrys single licensee and coordinator of radio communication outside of the government. The corporation s stock was held by four major airlines of the day. Today the stockholders include some 20 airlines and other companies such as Boeing.

Not much later ARINC took on the responsibility for all ground-based, aeronautical radio stations and for ensuring station compliance with Federal Radio Commission rules and regulations. Using this as a base technology, ARINC expanded its contributions to transport communications as well as continuing to support the commercial aviation industry and US military.

In the 1950s ARINC developed the science of reliability analysis.

In 1978 ARINC introduced ACARS© (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System), which is a data link between airports and civilian aircrafts.

= Standards =

ARINC 429 is the most common standard, as every modern aircraft of Airbus or Boeing uses this protocol. It provides the basic description of the functions and the supporting physical and electrical interfaces for the digital information transfer system. This protocol works either with 12.5kHz to 14.5kHz or 100kHz and 32 bits of data length. Using the low speed mode of operation tolerances of 10% apply, whereas only 5% tolerances apply to the high speed operation mode.

ARINC 429 like the ARINC 561 standard is based on the ARINC 575 data format.

Other commonly known standards are ARINC-615 or, especially designed for the Boeing 777, ARINC-629, which is a further development of ARINC-429.

ARINC-424 is an international standard file format for aircraft navigation data (See [http://baron.flightgear.org/pipermail/flightgear-users/2002-December/002695.html]).

ARINC 629 is a multi-transmiter protocol where many units share the same bus.

ARINC 664 define the use of a deterministic ethernet network as an avionic databus in modern aircrafts like the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787.

ARINC 708 is the standard for airborne weather radar. It defines the airborne weather radar characteristics for civil and military aircrafts. This standard also defines the way to control and get informations from the radar.

= See =