International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper describes a data acquisition system with integral signal conditioning capability. It is a distributed bus oriented system which greatly reduces the amount of wiring and structural penetrations required in previous systems used for this purpose. The system interfaces with virtually all of the transducer types existing on operational aircraft as well as those typically used for flight testing and proofing such as the strain gauges. It outputs data in digital form to a central unit which combines this data with other aircraft operational parameters for recording on tape or telemetry to the ground. The system consists of a remote multiplexer (RMUX) which provides the formatting and central processing functions and has provision for 16 plug-in signal conditioning modules. It also has provision for up to 20 external multiplexers (EMUXes) which are designed to service a cluster of like sensors in a local area. EMUX types include bridge, thermocouple, and a highly integrated pressure scanner unit. Signal conditioning and processing functions include input transient protection, variable blocks of gain, analog pre-sample filtering, and precision bandlimiting using digital techniques . The penalty for moving the acquisition units to remote locations on the aircraft as compared to previously used cabin mounted equipment is a much more severe environment. Temperature extremes and vibration are particularly severe around the engines. Because of the planned use on operational aircraft, provisions to prevent lightning propagation to the cabin are a significant future.

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 / The calibration processes consume a big quantity of resources: equipment and people, time and cost. As the number of calibration points increase the resources increase in the same extent. This automatic tool, aimed to reduce these resources, has been designed for commanding, managing and analyzing in real time a large number of acquired data points coming from the specimen under calibration and the standards used in the calibration process, applying at the same time the metrological algorithms which validate the calibration point. Its greatest achievement is the implementation of the rules for accepting or discarding the data point and the level of automation of the process. In the last flight test campaign its usage has been crucial for providing on time the data with the high accuracy required. It was achieved the commissioning of almost 200 temperature parameters in a short period of time taking advantage of equipment which nominal accuracy was not high enough for their direct application.

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 number of aircraft parameters used in flight-testing has constantly increased over the years and there is no sign that situation will change in the near future. On the contrary, in modern, software-driven, digital avionic systems, all sorts of parameters circulate through digital buses and can be transferred to on-board data acquisition systems more easily than those converted from traditional analog transducers, facilitating the request for more and more parameters to be acquired, processed, visualized, stored and retrieved at any given time. The constant unbalance between what parameter quantity engineers believe to be “sufficient” for developing and troubleshooting systems in a new aircraft, which tends to grow with aircraft complexity, and the associated cost of instrumenting a test prototype accordingly, which tends to grow beyond budget limits, pushes for new creative ways of handling both tendencies without compromising the ease of performing an engineering analysis directly from flight test data. This paper presents an alternative for handling large collections of flight test parameters through a relational approach, particularly in two important scenarios: the very basic creation and administration of the traditional “Flight Test Parameter List” and the transmission of selected data over a telemetry link for visualization in a Ground Station.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 28-31, 1996 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / The Interactive Analysis and Display System (IADS) provides the structures flight test engineer with enhanced test-data processing, management, and display capabilities necessary to perform safety critical aircraft analysis in near real time during a flight test mission. Germane to hazardous, fast-paced flight test programs is a need for enhanced situational awareness in the Mission Control Room (MCR). The IADS provides an enhanced situational awareness by providing an analysis and display capability designed to enhance the confidence of the engineer in making clearance decisions within the MCR environment. The IADS will allow the engineer to achieve this confidence level by providing a real-time display capability along with a simultaneous near real-time processing capability consisting of both time domain and frequency domain analyses. The system provides for displaying real-time data while performing interactive and automated near real-time analyses. The system also alerts the engineer when displayed and non-displayed parameters exceed predefined threshold limits. Both real-time data and results created in near real-time may be compared to predicted data on workstations to enhance the user’s confidence in making point-to-point clearance decisions. The IADS also provides a post-flight capability at the engineers project area desktop. Having a user interface that is common with the real-time system, the post-flight IADS provides all of the capabilities of the real-time IADS plus additional data storage and data organization to allow the engineer to perform structural analysis with test data from the complete test program. This paper discusses the system overview and capabilities of the IADS.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Interactive Analysis and Display System (IADS) provides the structures flight test engineer with enhanced test-data processing, management and display capabilities necessary to perform safety critical aircraft analysis in near real-time during a flight test mission. The IADS provides enhanced situational awareness through an analysis and display capability designed to increase the confidence of the engineer in making clearance decisions within the Mission control Room (MCR) environment. The engineer achieves this confidence level through IADS’ real-time display capability and simultaneous near real-time processing capability consisting of both time domain and frequency domain analyses. The system displays real-time data while performing interactive and automated near real-time analyses; alerting the engineer when displayed parameters exceed predefined threshold limits. Real-time data and results created in near real-time may be compared to previous flight test data to enhance the user’s confidence in making point-to-point clearance decisions. The IADS provides a post flight capability at the engineer’s project area desktop, with a user interface common with the real-time system. The post flight IADS provides all of the capabilities of the real-time IADS with additional data access and data organization, allowing the engineer to perform structural analysis with test data from the each flight and compile summary plots and tables over the most of the test program. The IADS promotes teamwork by allowing the engineers to share data and test results during a mission and in the post flight environment. This paper discusses the system overview and capabilities of the IADS.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper shows the economic implications associated with the allocation of spectrum for aeronautical telemetry. It explores both the economic implications of aeronautical telemetry spectrum and its flight testing application. The overall importance of telemetry to the economy, including applications of telemetry beyond flight testing, is also examined. An understanding of the economic implications of telemetry is crucial to the consideration of World Radio Conference (WRC) 2007 Agenda Item 2.12 that is proposing the allocation of additional spectrum for wideband aeronautical telemetry in the 3-30 gigahertz (GHz) band.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The technologies used for flight test are evolving. Trusted standards like CAIS and IRIG106 PCM are giving way to new “trusted standards” (and proven technologies/protocols) found in telecommunication and networking such as Ethernet, fiber channel, TCP/IP, UDP, ATM and so on. Currently there is $100Ms+ invested in CAIS and IRIG compliant equipment in the world. A key challenge in this evolution is to provide a reliable solution that allows the FTI engineer to immediately take advantage of these advanced technologies while protecting prior investment in equipment, knowledge, and resources during this transition. This paper presents an analysis of how to protect existing assets while still leveraging the power of the latest technologies. It looks at the characteristics of a “bridge” system, and suggests solutions for merging and linking data from and to different transmission protocols using data synchronization and deterministic data management cycles.

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 / In principle, the requirements for a flight test data acquisition system for space testing (launch vehicles, orbiters, satellites and International Space Station (ISS) installations) are very similar to those for more earth-bound applications. In practice, there are important environmental and operational differences that present challenges for both users and vendors of flight test equipment. Environmental issues include the severe vibration and shock experienced on take-off, followed by a very sharp thermal shock, culminating (for orbital vehicles) in a low temperature, low pressure, high radiation operating environment. Operational issues can include the need to dynamically adapt to changing configurations (for example when an instrumented stage is released) and the difficulty in Telemetering data during the initial launch stage from a vehicle that may not be recoverable, and therefore does not offer the option of an on-board recorder. Addressing these challenges requires simple, rugged and flexible solutions. Traditionally these solutions have been bespoke, specifically designed equipment. In an increasingly cost-conscious environment engineers are now looking to commercial off-the-shelf solutions. This paper discusses these solutions and highlights the issues that instrumentation engineers need to consider when designing or selecting flight test equipment.

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 / This paper presents the Flight Test Instrumentation Manager Software application internally developed and used inside the Eurocopter Flight Test department. This fully integrated and user friendly tool covers the all management requirement for entire life cycle of the flight test instrumentation equipment and configuration, tracking all the main events: order, calibration, configuration, service and repair, final disposal. FTIManager serves as a central hub between the instrumentation team and the post processing and analysis teams.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 13-16, 1986 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Experimental Flight Test organization of the Boeing Commercial Airplane Company has an onboard data reduction system known as the Airborne Data Analysis/Monitor System or ADAMS. ADAMS has evolved over the last 11 years from a system built around a single minicomputer to a system using two minicomputers to a distributed processing system based on microprocessors. The system is built around two buses. One bus is used for passing setup and control information between elements of the system. This is burst type data. The second bus is used for passing periodic data between the units. This data originates in the sensors installed by Flight Test or in the Black Boxes on the airplane. These buses interconnect a number of different processors. The Application Processor is the primary data analysis processor in the system. It runs the application programs and drives the display devices. A number of Application Processors may be installed. The File Processor handles the mass storage devices and such common peripheral devices as the printer. The Acquisition Interface Assembly is the entry point for data into ADAMS. It accepts serial PCM data from either the data acquisition system or the tape recorder. This data is then concatenated, converted to engineering units, and passed to the rest of the system for further processing and display. Over 70 programs have been written to support activities on the airplane. Programs exist to aid the instrumentation engineer in preparing the system for flight and to minimize the amount of paper which must be dealt with. Additional programs are used by the analysis engineer to evaluate the aircraft performance in real time. These programs cover the tests from takeoff through cruise testing and aircraft maneuvers to landing. They are used to analyze everything from brake performance to fuel consumption. Using these programs has reduced the amount of data reduction done on the ground and in many cases eliminated it completely.