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 / Adding an instrumentation / telemetry system to a test article has historically required an intrusive installation. Power, wiring, and available space typically present significant challenges. There has been a long-standing need in the test and training community for a non-intrusive, flexible and modular instrumentation and telemetry system that can be installed on an aircraft or other test article without the need for permanent modifications. In addition, as available space in aircraft weapon bays, small weapons, and unmanned vehicles becomes a premium, the miniaturization of remote sensors and telemetry units becomes critical. This paper describes the current status of the Advanced Subminiature Telemetry System (ASMT) Initial Test Capability Project. It discusses the progress to date in fielding an operational, wireless sensor system that may be installed on the aircraft skin using an Electro-Cleavable adhesive as an alternative to conventional mounting methods. The wireless sensor utilizes the Wireless Communications Standard for Wireless Personal Area Network™ (WPAN™) IEEE 802.15 Working Group standard (commonly referred to as Bluetooth) to establish communication between the sensor and controller modules. Results of aircraft ground testing for EMI compatibility with aircraft systems will be presented. It is also expected that actual flight test results will be available by the time the paper goes to publication.

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 / Adding an instrumentation / telemetry system to a test article has historically required an intrusive installation. Power, wiring, and available space typically present significant challenges. There has been a long-standing need in the test and training community for a non-intrusive, flexible and modular instrumentation and telemetry system that can be installed on an aircraft or other test article without the need for permanent modifications. In addition, as available space in aircraft weapon bays, small weapons, and unmanned vehicles becomes a premium, the miniaturization of remote sensors and telemetry units becomes critical. This paper describes the current status of the Advanced Subminiature Telemetry System (ASMT) Initial Test Capability Project. It discusses the challenges that have been overcome in developing a wireless sensor network system for use in an airborne test environment. These include wireless sensor packaging design, selection of operating frequencies, COTS wireless devices, batteries, system synchronization and data bandwidth calculations. The paper will also document the progress to date including preliminary test results.

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 Joint Strike Fighter program is the largest DOD contract ever awarded. There are three F-35 Lightning II variations, each intended to meet the specific needs of the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and U.S. Allies. The Data System required for this flight test program challenged the conventional ways used in instrumenting test aircraft. Typical data systems available today don’t provide the level of hardware and software integration required for today’s complex applications. For example, cockpit control panels, recording systems, TM transmitters, data acquisition systems and avionic bus interface units are all independent systems. Additionally, avionic bus catalogs, ground-based systems, and flight setup software have historically been independent components. This paper will describe the hardware and software components used by the F-35 flight test program to provide an integrated system. A special emphasis will be given to the methods used to accommodate rapid changes to the IEEE-1394B avionic bus catalog including the acquisition of that data, and the use of an IRIG-106 Chapter 10 distributed multiplexer / recorder system, which is being used simultaneously as a data acquisition system.

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 growth of the Internet and the resulting increasing speeds and decreasing prices of network equipment have spurred much interest in applying networks to flight test applications. However, the best-effort, variable-latency nature of network transport causes challenges that must be addressed to provide reliable data acquisition and timing performance. This paper describes the major issues that must be addressed when designing and implementing real-time networking applications. An overview of a recently implemented large-scale, network-centric data acquisition, recording, and telemetry system for commercial flight test applications provides a real-world example of what is currently achievable.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1989 / Town & Country Hotel & Convention Center, San Diego, California / Multiprocessing computer systems offer several attractive advantages for telemetry-related data acquisition and processing applications. These include: (1) high-bandwidth, fail-soft operation with convenient, low-cost, growth paths, (2) cost-effective integration and clustering of data acquisition, decommutation, monitoring, archiving, analysis, and display processing, and (3) support for modern telemetry system architectures that allow concurrent network access to test data (for both real-time and post-test analyses) by multiple analysts. This paper asserts that today’s general-purpose hardware and software offer viable platforms for these applications. One such system, currently under development, closely couples VME data buses and other off-the-shelf components, parallel processing computers, and commercial data analysis packages to acquire, process, display, and analyze telemetry and other data from a major weapon system. This approach blurs the formerly clear architectural distinction in telemetry data processing systems between special-purpose, front-end, preprocessing hardware and generalpurpose, back-end, host computers used for further processing and display.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 17-20, 1988 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / The explosive use and extensive development of software and hardware for the IBM PC and PC Clones over the past few years has positioned the PC as one of many viable alternatives to system designers configuring systems for both data acquisition and data analysis. Hardware abounds for capturing signals to be digitized and analyzed by software developed for the PC. Communication software has improved to where system developers can easily link instrumentation devices together to form integrated test environments for analyzing and displaying data. Telemetry systems, notable those developed for lab calibration and ground station environments, are one of many applications which can profit from the rapid development of data acquisition techniques for the PC. Recently developed for the ADS100A telemetry processor is a data acquisition module which allows the system to be linked into the PC world. The MUX-I/O module was designed to allow the PC access to telemetry data acquired through the ADS 100A, as well as provide a method by which data can be input into the telemetry environment from a host PC or equivalent RS-232 or GPIB interface. Signals captured and digitized by the ADS100A can be passed on to the PC for further processing and/or report generation. Providing interfaces of this form to the PC greatly enhances the functionality and scope of the abilities already provided by the ADS100A as one of the major front-end processors used in telemetry processing today. The MUX-I/O module helps "bridge the gap" between telemetry and the PC in an ever increasing demand for improving the quantity and quality of processing power required by today's telemetry environment. This paper focuses on two distinct topics, how to transfer data to and from the PC and what off-the-shelf software is available to provide communication links and analysis of incoming data. Major areas of discussion will include software protocols, pre vs post processing, static vs dynamic processing environments, and discussion of the major data analysis and acquisition packages available for the PC today, such as DaDisp and Lotus Measure, which aid the system designer in analyzing and displaying telemetry data. Novel applications of the telemetry to PC link will be discussed.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / In an effort to determine a more accurate characterization of the multipath fading effects on telemetry signals, the BYU telemetering group is implementing an inexpensive data acquisition system to measure these effects. It is designed to measure important signals in a diversity combining system. The received RF envelope, AGC signal, and the weighting signal for each beam, as well as the IRIG B time stamp will be sampled and stored. This system is based on an 80x86 platform for simplicity, compactness, and ease of use. The design is robust and portable to accommodate measurements in a variety of locations including aircraft, ground, and mobile environments.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The U.S. Army Redstone Technical Test Center (RTTC) uses telemetry as a vital part of its data acquisition and analysis for electromagnetic environmental effects developmental testing of U.S. Army weapon systems. Testing in an electromagnetic environment poses several unique challenges. These challenges have resulted in the development of highly customized telemetry and data acquisition systems. This paper discusses the design and integration of past and current telemetry needs to incorporate real-time or near real-time simulations or scene generations into the testing process.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / A digital feedback system used to monitor and control a high energy electron beam’s orbit and stability in a VUV and X-ray storage ring will realize a 10 fold increase in the feedback system response time using packetized (IRIG 107-98) telemetry. The improvement in feedback time will provide a significant improvement in the level of orbit stability. This paper discusses the advantages of using a packetizing standard and high speed data acquisition as a cost effective way to support the scientific community in their real time processing needs.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 21, 2002 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / There are many network standards in the commercial market today. The layered concept works so well, a developer can implement exactly the capability they desire through careful selection of standards and protocols. This brings up an interesting question of where we draw the line between standardizing on a single implementation and allowing the flexibility of all there is to offer? There are valid arguments for both sides. The telemetry community cannot afford to let this question fall through the cracks. We have the chance to identify what we need to do and how we should do it for both the specific application and the overall system.