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 Western Aeronautical Test Range (WATR) at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) employs the WATR Integrated Next Generation System (WINGS) for the processing and display of aeronautical flight data. This report discusses the post-mission segment of the WINGS architecture. A team designed and implemented a system for the near- and long-term storage and distribution of mission data for flight projects at DFRC, providing the user with intelligent access to data. Discussed are the legacy system, an industry survey, system operational concept, high-level system features, and initial design efforts.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper describes the recently developed Loral Instrumentation ground-based equipment used to select and process post-flight test data from the Boeing 777 airplane as it is played back from a digital tape recorder (e.g., the Ampex DCRSi II) at very high speeds. Gigabytes (GB) of data, stored on recorder cassettes in the Boeing 777 during flight testing, are played back on the ground at a 15-30 MB/sec rate into ten multiplexed Loral Instrumentation System 500 Model 550s for high-speed decoding, processing, time correlation, and subsequent storage or distribution. The ten Loral 550s are multiplexed for independent data path processing from ten separate tape sources simultaneously. This system features a parallel multiplexed configuration that allows Boeing to perform critical 777 flight test processing at unprecedented speeds. Boeing calls this system the Parallel Multiplexed Processing Data (PMPD) System. The key advantage of the ground station's design is that Boeing engineers can add their own application-specific control and setup software. The Loral 550 VMEbus allows Boeing to add VME modules when needed, ensuring system growth with the addition of other LI-developed products, Boeing-developed products or purchased VME modules. With hundreds of third-party VME modules available, system expansion is unlimited. The final system has the capability to input data at 15 MB/sec. The present aggregate throughput capability of all ten 24-bit Decoders is 150 MB/sec from ten separate tape sources. A 24-bit Decoder was designed to support the 30 MB/sec DCRSi III so that the system can eventually support a total aggregate throughput of 300 MB/sec. Clearly, such high data selection, rejection, and processing will significantly accelerate flight certification and production testing of today's state-of-the-art aircraft. This system was supplied with low level software interfaces such that the customer would develop their own applications specific code and displays. The Loral 550 lends itself to this kind of applications due to its VME chassis, VxWorks operating system and the modularity of the software.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1998 / Town & Country Resort Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / As aircraft become more complex and require more resources over larger areas, the challenge of the test ranges is to provide economical solutions to move telemetry data from the test article to the data processing facility. Edwards AFB is in the process of upgrading the ground transmission facilities to transport data including telemetry using Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). This paper documents the challenge of supporting telemetry over ATM, different approaches that are available, the benefits of using ATM, and discussion of candidate hardware options. The effort at Edwards include the linking of the major range facilities over a fiber optic backbone and links to other major test ranges in the Southwest Range Complex via microwave. The fiber optic backbone is expected to be OC-12c (622 Mbps) ATM supporting new capabilities as well as all of the legacy systems. The backbone system will be designed so that migration to OC-48 is possible without service disruption. The microwave links are multiple DS-3 capable. Some of these DS-3s may support legacy systems, but the ability to link ranges using ATM is expected simultaneously.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 27-30, 1997 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / An IRIG standard flight recorder has been developed that is based on half-inch helical scan technology. The recorder was developed by combining the data channel of existing ground-based recording systems with transport technology used in both flight test and operational fighter aircraft environments. The design goal was to achieve cross play compatibility with the defined IRIG 106.6 tape format. Significant margins were provided in the design to maintain compatibility with tapes recorded in fighter aircraft environments. Operation at up to 50,000 feet, a temperature range of -40EC to +55EC, and vibration sources to Mil Spec 5400T are requirements in this environment. How these technical problems were overcome during the development of this recorder is addressed in this paper.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The architecture and capabilities of Navy Flight Test’s latest generation telemetry system are described. The Real-time Telemetry Processing System (RTPS) is the name ascribed to successive systems at the Patuxent River Navy Flight Test complex since 1973. This version of the system, dubbed RTPS IV, and the associated facility improvements will enable the Navy to support the next generation military fighter, the Joint Strike Fighter, and every other ongoing and planned Navy test program.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / This paper presents an overview of the telemetry attributes management system used to support the Advanced Data Acquisition and Processing System (ADAPS) at the Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC). The Joint Test Data Management System is an object-oriented system used to store telemetry attributes. JTDMS accepts telemetry attributes in a variety of formats and provides setup files for the ADAPS system.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1987 / Town and Country Hotel, San Diego, California / The Telemetry Systems Operation (TSO) of CSC in Lompoc, California, has been developing telemetry systems since October 1981. Three major turnkey systems have been developed as well as several smaller derivative systems. Each system, built for a different end-user, was custom fit to support unique requirements and often represented several different techniques for accommodating similar problems within different system architectures. This paper describes the evolution of TM system architectures developed by TSO Lompoc, and the special engineering problems solved in the course of their development to provide the user with accommodating telemetry systems that are responsive, expandable, and cost-effective.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 28-31, 1996 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / With the technological evolution of flying equipment, computing and store capacity we need to have a new view of the methods of acquisition, storage and archiving data.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / During high performance fighter aircraft manoeuvres, a fighter pilot may be exposed to a physiological phenomenon known as the “Push-Pull Effect” (reference (ref) [1]). This effect will alter the pilot’s homeostasis whereas blood flow to the brain will be increased during low negative normal acceleration (-Gz) and suddenly decreased during positive normal acceleration (+Gz). It has been hypothesized that this effect can lessen the Gtolerance of the human body thereby making the subject more susceptible to G induced Loss of Consciousness (G-LOC) (refs [2], [3] and [4]). G-LOC is not a desirable state for a pilot in a high performance aircraft such as a CF-18. To better understand and study the Push-Pull Effect on a fighter pilot, the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment (AETE) and the Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine (DCIEM) produced an In-Flight Research (IFR) Program sponsored by the Canadian Forces (CF). The aim of this program was to measure the physiological response of relaxed test subjects, unprotected by a G-suit, when exposed to the Push-Pull manoeuvre in flight. This IFR would validate the centrifuge data and confirm that the Push-Pull Effect can occur in flight. This paper will present the instrumentation, design, telemetry system and installation methodology utilized to perform experimental physiological research on a high performance, ejection seat equipped fighter aircraft (CF-18). Also, preliminary results on the Push-Pull Effect, obtained through this IFR Program will be presented.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 17-20, 1994 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / With today's telemetry systems, an hour-long analog test tape can be digitized in one hour or less. However, the digitized data produced by today's telemetry systems is usually not in a format that can be directly analyzed by the test engineer's analysis tools. The digitized data must be formatted before analysis can begin. The data formatting process can take from one to eight hours depending on the amount of data, the power of the system's host computer, and the complexity of the analysis software's data format. If more than one analysis package is used by the test engineer, the data has to be formatted separately for each package. Using today's high-speed RISC processors and large memory technology, a real-time Flexible Data Formatter can be added to the Telemetry Front End to perform this formatting function. The Flexible Data Formatter (FDF) allows the telemetry user to program the front-end hardware to output the telemetry test data in a format compatible with the user's analysis software. The FDF can also output multiple data files, each in a different format for supporting multiple analysis packages. This eliminates the file formatting step, thus reducing the time to process the data from each test by a factor of two to nine.