International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 29-November 02, 1990 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The new generation of advanced tactical aircraft and missiles places unique demands on the electronic and mechanical designs for flight test instrumentation, high bit rates, operating temperature range and system interconnect wiring requirements. This paper describes a microminiature PCM distributed data acquisition system with integral signal conditioning (MMSC) which has been used in advanced aircraft and missile flight testing. The MMSC system is constructed from microminiature, stackable modules which allow the user to reconfigure the system as the requirements change. A second system is also described which uses the same circuitry in hermetic hybrid packages on plug-in circuit boards.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 22-25, 1984 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / The requirements for data acquisition systems grow rapidly with the progress of technology. Increasingly complex test instruments become available. Integration of instruments and computers into an operational measurement system, however, is more difficult and expensive as requirements increase. A family of instruments was developed which can perform complex measurement tasks without a large integration effort since it provides a large number of compatible hardware and software modules for conditioning and conversion of signals into digital form, for data storage, data transmission, and data pre-processing.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 28-31, 1996 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / The Department of Defense (DoD), through a Tri-Service Program Office, is developing the Common Airborne Instrumentation System (CAIS) to promote standardization, commonality, and interoperability among aircraft test instrumentation systems. The advent of CAIS will change how the DoD test community conducts business. The CAIS program will allow aircraft test and evaluation facilities to utilize common airborne systems, ground support equipment, and technical knowledge for airborne instrumentation systems. The CAIS Toolset Software (CTS) provides the capability to generate formats and load/verify airborne memories. The CTS is primarily a software applications program hosted on an IBM compatible portable personal computer with several interface cards. The software will perform most functions without the presence of the interface cards to allow the user to develop test configurations and format loads on a desktop computer.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Department of Defense (DoD), through a Tri-Service Program Office, is developing the Common Airborne Instrumentation System (CAIS) to promote standardization, commonality, and interoperability among aircraft test instrumentation systems. The advent of CAIS will change how the DoD test community conducts business. The CAIS program will allow aircraft test and evaluation facilities to utilize common airborne systems, ground support equipment, and technical knowledge for airborne instrumentation systems. During the development of the CAIS, the Program Office will conduct a broad spectrum of tests: engineering design, acceptance, environmental qualification, system demonstration, and flight qualification. Each of these tests addresses specific aspects of the overall functional requirements and specifications. The use of test matrices enables the program office to insure each specific test covers the optimum requirements, and the combination of all testing efforts addresses the total system functional requirements.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Visions of future airborne data acquisition systems include the “network in the sky” concept where a test or training participant logs on to the range network, just like today's computer users on the ground log onto the local area network (LAN). Through two-way telemetry links, the test or training participant seamlessly becomes a node in the range network. Thus, easily sharing data with event controllers and other airborne, ship-, ground-, and space-based network nodes. Such a network would allow the conduct of highly integrated test/training scenarios involving virtual and real participants without requiring physical proximity. This technology has a high payoff for the warfighter, making it a desirable objective of present and future DoD-funded development of data acquisition systems. This much-anticipated, future state-of-the-art in data acquisition will require extensive changes from today's test/training instrumentation architecture. Based on technology that is currently emerging for computer networks, this paper describes an evolutionary path for data acquisition systems to follow in order to achieve the anticipated bandwidth required for future bandwidth-intensive applications like the network in the sky. New networking paradigms, like Sun's Jini™ project, point the way to impressive usability with dramatically lower costs and network administration in the near term for ground-based networks, but they require support for just-in-time delivery of software “drivers” and other applications. These need gigabit network speeds to be viable. If this and other new networking technology is to be transferred to the test/training domain, bit rates will require two orders of magnitude improvement from today's 10-megabit range. This paper explores the technological and political telemetry issues that must be addressed before there can be a network in the sky (or anywhere else).

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1998 / Town & Country Resort Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / FAA is currently evaluating DGPS based CAT III Landing Systems for use as the next generation commercial aviation landing system standard. Any technique to validate such a DGPS based system must have at least equivalent accuracy. A laser position tracking system coupled with a high performance real-time computational capability was developed providing real-time analysis of performance. This real-time performance measurement system was key in enabling the quick completion of a large number of test approach and landings needed to achieve statistically accurate results.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 21, 2002 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / Transducers have traditionally been incorporated into data systems by connecting the transducer to a signal conditioner that is then connected to a multiplexer with an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC). The signal conditioning, multiplexer and the ADC are usually included within the same assembly that is called a Data Acquisition Unit (DAU) or an encoder. A network centric data system allows the same architecture to be used if the interface to the encoder is changed to be a network interface. However, a network centric architecture allows other options as well. The signal conditioning and ADC can be included within the same package as the transducer and the assembly can be interfaced to the network. When this is combined with the processing capability now available, a whole new range of possibilities present themselves. The transducer can now be digitally processed to provide a linear output, it can be converted to Engineering Units, digitally filtered or have a host of other functions performed within the housing that contains the transducer. However, the network centric approach does not produce these advantages without some disadvantages. The major problem that needs to be solved is how we time stamp the data. With the encoder we could time stamp the PCM frame and be able to determine the time that a sample was taken from that information. Even in systems that convert the encoder to have a network interface, the time stamp needs to be affixed to the data in the encoder. With a network centric approach, the sample can be taken in the transducer and how to time stamp it becomes a real problem. This is a problem that must be considered at the system level. Some method of making time available at a low enough level in the system to allow transducer outputs to be time stamped is either a network issue or it requires a separate interface.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 27-30, 1997 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / In this paper, the Miniature Data Acquisition Transceiver System (Mini-DAT), a Type II PC-Card based data acquisition and transceiver system is described. The Mini-DAT was developed by ViaSat and is currently in use at the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) at Eglin AFB. AFRL is investigating the use of this Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band system for data collection with advanced munitions. The Mini-DAT combines the advantages of PC-Card technology with an off the shelf interfacing and packaging approach to provide a large array of capabilities in a very small package. The system provides everything needed to collect analog, discrete and digital data, process the data and transfer the data in a wireless fashion using the latest license free spread spectrum modulation technology. The advanced design of the Mini-DAT allows for operation in harsh remote environments, collecting data unattended and accessed remotely. A graphical user interface (GUI) is provided via a Windows 3.x and 95 software package that can be easily customized for specific applications. The Mini-DAT provides fast and reliable error-free data transfer over the 2.4GHz ISM communication band. It operates over a shared 80MHz bandwidth, allowing multiple access of a number of portable units operating simultaneously in the same band.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 22-25, 2001 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper presents the results of a feasibility study undertaken by the University of Salzburg (Austria), investigating the autonomous acquisition of environmental data in a global network. A suggested application which is used as the basis of this paper is a volcano monitoring system which would be able to track the activity of a volcano and act as a disaster warning system. The background Volcano observation data required for such a system is covered, before discussing the concepts for sensor data acquisition, storage and processing. A final analysis is then presented of the opportunities for the transmission by packet radio (both terrestrial and satellite).

ITC/USA 2015 Conference Proceedings / The Fifty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 26-29, 2015 / Bally's Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV / In modern flight test installations there is a continuing trend to move the data acquisition closer to the sensors. As a consequence the data acquisition chassis needs to be mounted in locations that are small, inaccessible and subject to harsh environmental conditions. On top of this there are an increasing number of measurements required for each new flight test campaign. This paper discusses the challenges of designing a small lightweight data acquisition chassis which can provide hundreds of channels of measurement capability while operating in tight spaces which are exposed to fluids, high vibration and extremes of temperature. The paper suggests ways of designing and installing the data acquisition chassis in order to optimize the available installation space while mitigating the effects of the harsh environmental conditions.