ITC/USA 2005 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2005 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / CTEIP has launched the integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) project to foster advances in networking and telemetry technology to meet emerging needs of major test programs as well as within the Major Range and Test Facility Base’s. This paper describes the objective of the vNET concept demonstration to provide a test vehicle instrumentation network architecture that can support additional capabilities for data access to the test vehicle. Three specific iNET system needs have been identified as being desirable as the basis for evaluating a Concept of Operation through this demonstration project. These three key areas are Data Mining, Gapless Telemetry, and Error Free Data delivery.

ITC/USA 2005 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2005 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The telemetry industry anticipates the tremendous potential value of adding full networking capability to telemetry systems. However, much of this potential can be realized while working with legacy equipment. By adding modules that interface transparently to existing equipment, continuous telemetry data can be encapsulated in discrete packets for over the air transmission. Packet fields can include header, sequence number and bytes for error detection and correction. The RF packet is transmitted without gaps through a standard serial interface and rate adjusted for the packet overhead – effectively making packetization transparent to a legacy system. The receiver unit performs packet synchronization, error correction, extraction of stream quality metrics and re-encapsulation of the payload data into an internet protocol (IP) packet. These standard packets can then be sent over the existing network transport system to the range control center. At the range control center, the extracted stream quality metrics are used to select the best telemetry source in real-time. This paper provides a general discussion of the path to a fully realized, packet-based telemetry network and a brief but comprehensive overview of the Hypernet system architecture as a case study.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The efficient distribution of telemetry data via standard Ethernet networks has become an increasingly important part of telemetry system designs. While there are several methods and architectures to choose from, a solution based on IP multicast transmission provides for a fast and efficient method of distributing data from a single source to multiple clients. This data distribution method allows for increased scalability as data servers are no longer required to service individual client connections, and network bandwidth is minimized with multiple network clients being simultaneously serviced via a single data transmission.

ITC/USA 2009 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fifth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 26-29, 2009 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) project was launched to foster network enhanced instrumentation and telemetry. The program is currently implementing an operational demonstration. That will involve installing and using a network enhanced instrumentation system on a helicopter. This demonstration will be used as a learning exercise for the implementation of network technologies. This paper will give a brief description of the operational demonstration. Then it will explore the need for an Authority to Operate (ATO) and describe how one was obtained.

ITC/USA 2009 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fifth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 26-29, 2009 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / With the emergence of higher bandwidth Ethernet networks on ranges, many ranges are converting their data transport from ATM(Asynchronous Transfer Mode) networks to Ethernet networks. Both networks have their respective advantages and disadvantages, however one reoccurring issue is product interoperability. The RCC (Range Commanders Council) TTG (Telecommunications and Timing Group) created the Telemetry over IP (TMoIP 218-07) solution with input from various ranges and vendors to solve this issue. This specification allows ranges to use different vendors together for Telemetry over Ethernet, based on specific needs at each site. This paper targets those who are thinking about converting from ATM to Ethernet networks.

ITC/USA 2008 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fourth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 27-30, 2008 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / Teletronics Technology Corp. has been involved in the research and development of networked data acquisition systems for use in airborne instrumentation for several years. Recently, TTC successfully applied the advanced technology that was developed during these airborne efforts to a terrestrial application involving Army ground vehicles. The Future Combat Systems Program (FCS) for the U.S. Army recently solicited a networked-based solution to the problem of acquiring real-time data specific to the training of soldiers operating visual targeting systems within Bradley Armored Vehicles and Abrams Battle Tanks. This paper describes the High-Speed Digital Recording system, a network-based data acquisition system designed to allow for the recording of high-resolution (up to 1600x1280) RGB video, user-selected Ethernet packets, along with audio and GPS time information.

ITC/USA 2008 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fourth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 27-30, 2008 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / ARINC 664 presents the designers of data acquisition systems challenges not previously seen on other aircraft avionic buses. Among the biggest challenges are providing the test instrumentation system with the capacity to process two redundant Ethernet segments that may be carrying packet traffic at near wire-line speed. To achieve this level of performance, the hardware and software must not only perform mundane operations, like time stamping and simple virtual link MAC filtering, but also need to implement core ARINC 664 functions like redundancy management and integrity checking. Furthermore, other TCP/IP operations, such as IP header checksum, must also be offloaded to the hardware in order to maintain real-time operation. This paper describes the implementation path followed by TTC during its development of an ARINC 664 network monitor used in a large commercial aircraft flight test program.

ITC/USA 2007 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Third Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2007 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / iNET is a project tasked to foster advances in networking and telemetry technology to meet emerging needs. This paper describes one objective of the project, which is standardization and interoperability. It begins to explore issues for achieving a level of interoperability among differing vendor’s hardware such as data acquisition units, data recorders, video systems, transceivers, and network encryption. Specifically, this paper addresses the expansion of the current demonstration system with the addition of multiple vendor data acquisition units. It will also attempt to address the level of standardization necessary for achieving interoperability while still enabling vendors to add their value added contributions into their products.

ITC/USA 2007 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Third Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2007 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Migrating analog architectures and equipments to network architectures is underway all across the globe. There is no doubt, a modern instrument must fit the network environment or simply will not be procured. Yet, funding constraints temper wholesale changes to net-centric technologies. The last analog stronghold in our data center is the oscillograph. Over 50 Gould TA 6000 Oscillographs reside at White Sands Missile Range. These are digital implementations of analog recorders, hence require analog signaling. Digital telemetry data (most common format) must be converted to analog to drive an oscillograph that converts analog back to digital to plot the data. The oscillograph’s interface board may be “hacked” by removing the Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) gaining direct access to the digital signal path. This idea was worth attempting as the prospect of replacing that many recorders with the newer network driven oscillographs is costly hence remote. This paper’s topic is the conversion of the hardware and a discussion on software issues. Though not pretty, it does preserve the large recorder investment for the time being. Issues with analog signaling, such as noise, drift and ground loops are gone. A commercial ethernet to digital adapter drives the new digital interface and transforms the recorder into an net-centric instrument.

ITC/USA 2007 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Third Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2007 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The deployment of networks has become ubiquitous in the avionics world, as they have opened the door to a rich suite of common and open hardware and software tools that provide greater functionality and interoperability. Unfortunately, a number of networked avionic and other related applications can be affected by vendor or application specific proprietary implementations. These “closed” implementations may reduce or eliminate the benefits of a standardized network, requiring the customization of the data acquisition system to allow it to properly operate with the other devices. This paper presents the approach that was recently employed for the development of a network interface module that can be quickly reconfigured to address the changing requirements of network applications, including monitoring of industry standard and proprietary networks, or providing the command and data interface to the data acquisition system itself. This reconfigurability of the module is shown in a review of four different specific applications.