Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-126).

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International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 13-16, 1986 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Airborne Platform Telemetry Relay System (AP/TM) is currently being built for the Gulf Range Instrumentation System. The AP/TM will allow air-to-air missile test and training missions to be conducted beyond the line-of-sight of land-based instrumentation. The AP/TM is comprised of the following subsystems: C a Telemetry Data Relay C a Sea Surveillance Radar and Radar Data Link C a Drone Control Relay C a UHF Radio Relay The Telemetry Data Relay Subsystem will receive telemetry signals from five independent sources and will retransmit them to land based receiving sites. This subsystem contains a 75 square foot, electronically steerable, five beam phased array antenna and uses polarization diversity to eliminate polarization mismatch loss and to improve reception in the presence of multipath propagation. The AP/TM will also have the capability of relaying four channels of voice communications and drone tracking data and to perform sea surveillance of the mission area. The coordinates of targets detected by the radar will be relayed to the range control center over a high frequency (HF) data link. In addition to the airborne equipment, the system also includes a ground support instrumentation van which is used for pre- and post-flight checkout and maintenance.

The aircraft currently being used to support the Navy’s mission of Telemetry Reception, Range Safety as well as Range Surveillance/Clearance are reaching the end of their useful life. As a result, there are ongoing efforts to procure a new aircraft and integrate these mission systems in order to continue the support of critical Naval Test Range operations. This paper will detail the current efforts being undertaken to upgrade a Gulfstream 550 to perform Range Support missions for the Multi-service Government Test Ranges.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Advanced Airborne Test Instrumentation System (AATIS), one of the major instrumentation systems in use today by the Department of Defense (DoD), was developed in the late 1980's to improve and modernize its predecessor - the Airborne Test Instrumentation System (ATIS). Use of AATIS, by not only the Air Force but the Navy and Army, has improved instrumentation commonality and interoperability across multiple test programs. AATIS, developed by the same manufacturer as the DoD Common Airborne Instrumentation System (CAIS), has a common bus structure - enabling cross utilization of many components which will ease transition from one system to another. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview on the Advanced ATIS System and its logistics support concept. For system description, an overview is presented on the airborne system and related ground support equipment. A brief description is given on the three levels of maintenance being used or planned for by the using activities. Finally, a projection is presented on the utilization of this system for the next 3 years.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1992 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / SAIC, under contract with the Air Force Wright Laboratory, has developed and demonstrated a prototype High Speed Avionics Data Instrumentation System (HADIS). The HADIS system is designed to operate in both the laboratory and in an airborne environment. This paper briefly describes the features of the system including its ability to collect and record data at up to 13.25 MBytes per second, its ability to provide real-time processing of the data, and its ability to rapidly reconfigure its interfaces based on field programmable gate arrays. The paper discusses the need for multiple data paths within the system to allow parallel operations to take place, the need for dedicated access to the recorder subsystem, and methods for allowing selective recording based on the information content of the data. The effort was sponsored by the Test Facility Working Group to provide a common data collection system for Air Force logistics and test and evaluation facilities. The design is owned by the government and may be cost-effectively used by any government agency.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 27-30, 1997 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper addresses the development requirements for a digital recorder to be used for fighter environment and attack Helicopter applications. This development is focused on triservice requirements to allow for a common system to meet the needs of various test centers.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter aircraft program is currently flight testing a Fibre Channel Network (FCN), which will initially replace certain Avionics Systems’ MIL-STD-1553 communications. The Advanced Mission Computers and Displays (AMC&D) and the Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) RADAR are replacing their MIL-STD-1553 counterparts to fulfill performance enhancements and growing data requirements. The maximum amount of data that can be transferred between these systems is significantly increasing. Each remote terminal on a MIL-STD-1553 bus can transmit or receive approximately 1Mbps. Each node on a FCN can simultaneously transmit and receive 1Gbps. With a Fibre Channel Network Switch (FCNS), multiple systems can communicate concurrently, thus increasing overall system throughput even further. Several other systems will be replaced in the near future utilizing the FCNS. The Fibre Channel Interface Unit (FCIU) was designed for the F/A-18E/F AESA program as a nonintrusive way to monitor multiple nodes, extract node specific information, and record this information using conventional on-board recorders. In order to reduce the risks associated with developing hardware and software concurrently with the Avionic System’s protocol, the FCIU was developed as an upper-level-protocol (ULP) (layer FC-4) independent device. Two big advantages of ULP independence are the avoidance of complex protocol programming for each different type of monitored network system and the non-intrusive nature of the FCIU connection to the FCN. This facilitates the quick installation of the FCIU to monitor any FC network and the FCIU IRIG-106 PCM type output lends itself to be integrated quickly into a typical Flight Test data recording or telemetry system.

In this article, I introduce a novel airborne network mobility model, called the Smooth Turn Mobility Model, that captures the correlation of acceleration for airborne vehicles across time and spatial coordinates. E?ective routing in airborne networks (ANs) relies on suitable mobility models that capture the random movement pattern of airborne vehicles. As airborne vehicles cannot make sharp turns as easily as ground vehicles do, the widely used mobility models for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks such as Random Waypoint and Random Direction models fail. Our model is realistic in capturing the tendency of airborne vehicles toward making straight trajectory and smooth turns with large radius, and whereas is simple enough for tractable connectivity analysis and routing design.

An ultralight aircraft based airborne geophysical system was developed and operated by the Council for Geoscience during the period 1997-2004. The aim of this project was to collect geophysical data at lower cost and higher resolution than was possible using conventional airborne systems. This dissertation describes the development of the radiometric systems used in the ultralight airborne survey project. During the course of the study, a number of obstacles to the successful collection and processing of radiometric data with the ultralight-mounted systems were encountered. These are described and solutions proposed. To facilitate the development hardware systems and processing methods, a Monte Carlo simulation method was developed to produce spectra containing realistic signal and noise components. This method was applied to the selection of detector materials and the specification of detector sizes as well as being used to simulate large spectral data sets for the development and testing of processing and calibration procedures. Radiometric data follow a Poisson Distribution, with the signal to noise ratio being dependent on the count rate recorded, which, in turn, depends on the size of the detector used. The ultralight aircraft were capable of carrying a detector one eighth the size of that used in conventional systems. To allow for the use of the smaller detector, the noise adjusted singular value decomposition (NASVD) processing technique was employed. While this technique is commonly applied in noise-reduction, the original application, namely the determination and mapping of spectral components was also utilised. iii During the course of the study no suitable calibration facilities were available inside South Africa. This necessitated the development of a spectral stripping method, utilising a technique generally applied to much higher resolution spectral data collected under laboratory conditions. Simulation studies and practical application showed that this method performs well, in some cases outperforming the conventional stripping method. The method is also applicable to the study of anthropogenic radionuclides, where suitable calibration facilities are generally unavailable. An alternative to the conventional method of altitude correction was also applied to the radiometric data collected with the ultralight-mounted systems. Using simulated data, a spectrometer based on a bismuth germanate (BGO) detector was designed and constructed. This material is significantly denser than the more usual thallium activated sodium iodide used for detector fabrication and has a higher effective atomic number, giving it a greater photopeak efficiency. However the poor light production of this scintillation material results in a poorer energy resolution than a conventional detector. Initial tests using small BGO detectors were promising and a larger detector was acquired and tested. Unfortunately the poor energy resolution and high cost of BGO detectors led to the conclusion that they did not offer the advantages initially hoped for. Nevertheless a number of successful surveys were flown using the BGO detector. Ultralight-mounted systems were found to be ideal for small surveys where high spatial resolution is required. The ultralight systems were successfully applied to the detection of radioactive pollution on a number of sites in the Witwatersrand and related gold fields and one site where anthropogenic radionuclide contamination was present. In some cases, the data could be compared to data collected using a conventional airborne radiometric system. Here the ultralight- mounted systems were found to perform satisfactorily, albeit with a poorer signal to noise ratio except where adverse flying conditions necessitated flying at high altitude. The strengths, weaknesses and potential applications of ultralight-mounted airborne radiometric systems are discussed.