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insulation, but the payoff in weight savings can be massive. Weight reduction in data cabling is accomplished largely by reducing the number of cables required while maintaining a sufficient bandwidth for signaling. There are several techniques for doing so, including using technologies like Gigabit Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) to transmit large amounts of data, as well as bus architectures such as Controller Area Network (CAN) that may be appropriate when lower throughput is required. As many such systems depend on a single link, systems must be designed in such a way as to be deterministic in properly maintaining safety and reliability standards. In some situations, it's possible to do away with dedicated signal wires altogether and transmit data and power together. A great example of this would be a remote sensor, perhaps monitoring a single driving motor, with a topology that formats data in such a way that it can "ride" on the same wires that are transmitting power. Specialized electronics are needed to enable this kind of operation, which can be used to work with SPE, CAN bus, or other communication systems. For example, Texas Instruments' THVD8000 is an RS-485 transceiver with on-off keying (OOK) modulation and demodulation built in for power line communication up to 500 kbps. Other cable reduction techniques include using a serializer/deserializer (SERDES) device to aggregate multiple signals into one data line, employing noise reduction, data compression, and error correction techniques. While the weight of each cable may seem trivial on its own, when combined, their weight can be substantial. A modern EV has about 70Kg of cables. Given that a UAM vehicle has roughly double the power requirements and many additional complexities, one could expect this to be an even greater concern. Consider that if cabling weight were to surge to 200Kg or more, this is easily the weight of two full-sized passengers, a significant load on any airborne system. C h a p t e r 5 | M a n a g i n g UA M C o m p l ex i t y a n d W e i g h t The typical boundaries between companies, departments, and systems lead to non-optimized designs, and those boundaries have to be reduced. The cables are only a typical reflection of that, because they sit in the middle of multiple interfaces." João Filipe Ferreira Electrical Systems Engineer, Lilium 22 Addressing New Challenges in Urban Air Mobility