A communications network for a vehicle comprising: a central
processing node; a zonal node; an
Ethernet network
coupling the central
processing node to the zonal node; and an edge network coupled to the zonal node, the edge network comprising a
time domain multiplexing (TDM)
bus and a plurality of edge transducers coupled to the
TDM bus, wherein the zonal node comprises a network bridge for bridging
transducer data received from the
TDM bus to the
Ethernet backbone network, wherein the network bridge comprises: interface circuitry for
interfacing the network bridge with the
TDM bus;
clock recovery circuitry for recovering a
clock signal for use by the edge network from an
Ethernet frame received from the Ethernet network, wherein a TDM cycle of the TDM
bus is synchronised to the recovered
clock signal; acoustic data
receiver circuitry coupled to the interface circuitry by a first low-latency
data path, wherein the acoustic data
receiver circuitry is configured to transmit acoustic data contained in Ethernet frames received at the network bridge from the Ethernet network to the interface circuitry; and acoustic data
transmitter circuitry coupled to the interface circuitry by a second low-latency
data path, wherein the acoustic data
transmitter circuitry is configured to transmit Ethernet frames containing acoustic data received at the interface circuitry from the edge network to the Ethernet network.