Powering In-flight Entertainment on Commercial Airlines
Modern commercial airplanes have deployed sophisticated in-flight entertainment systems. These have put higher demands on the infrastructure of the aircraft.
Powering in-flight entertainment systems is not easy. They have specific demands in terms of efficiency, safety, electrical noise, and weight. In many cases, these are retrofitted into the aircraft after the aircraft is built. Embedded engineers play a major role here.
This means, you have to employ special methods to power these systems because of the specific electrical and safety requirements of these systems. Most in-flight entertainment systems have a power range of 100W though there new systems with power ranges of up to 300W.
There are a number of low cost, standard power supply units in these ranges. But aviation standards say that these cannot be used in in-flight entertainment applications.
If you need a special, high power solution in the context of an IFE system, a custom power supply may be your best bet. IFE power solutions have specific requirements unlike other commercial units.
The number of in-flight entertainment systems deployed on airplanes is steadily increasing. So the demand for power convertors or power supply units is also increasing. If you know the configuration of the IFE, you can also create custom power supply units for the same.
