Configuring typical devices in the telemetry community requires the creation of complex, device-specific configuration files. While the grammar of the configuration files is vendor neutral, the device specific details are vendor specific. Thus, a naïve approach to building these files is to construct a file, test it against a device, and then iterate. The specification sheets (and other documents) for the device can serve as a guide, but the details of flight test configuration possibilities are immense and, in this community, typically not fully documented. This paper describes a process of creating a set of general rules describing characteristics of a configuration file and using those rules to discover the configuration constraints of telemetry devices automatically. The discovered constraints posed by a particular vendor’s device can then be quickly formed into a correct-by-construction constraint-based grammar for use in other systems.

ITC/USA 2010 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Sixth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 25-28, 2010 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / The integrated Network-Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) project has developed standards to enhance telemetry systems for the twenty-first century. A foundational component of these standards is the Metadata Description Language (MDL). MDL is an eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based language for describing requirements, design choices, and configuration parameters of a Telemetry Network System (TmNS). Within a TmNS, MDL guides the exchange of information between applications and the configuration of network devices. Recent initial evaluations assessed MDL in terms of the expressive power of the language and the level of effort in developing applications that utilize MDL Instance Documents. Performing these initial evaluations required the generation of MDL Instance Documents to describe scenarios representative of both near-term and future telemetry systems that express different levels of iNET interoperability. These initial evaluations determined quantitative metrics such as file size, memory requirements, and required parsing time for MDL Instance Documents, and further evaluations judged the efficacy and complexity of MDL for describing and configuring a TmNS.

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 order to help manage the complexity in designing and configuring network-based telemetry systems, and to promote interoperability between equipment from multiple vendors, the integrated Network-Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) Metadata Standards Working Group (MDSWG) has developed a standard language for describing and configuring these systems. This paper will provide the community with an overview of Metadata Description Language (MDL), and describe how MDL can support the description of the requirements, design choices, and the configuration of devices that make up the Telemetry Network System (TmNS). MDL, an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) based language that describes a TmNS from various aspects, is embodied by an XML schema along with additional rules and constraints. Example MDL instance documents will be presented to illustrate how MDL can be used to capture requirements, describe the design, and configure the equipment that makes up a TmNS. Various scenarios for how MDL can be used will be discussed.

Submitted by Felipe Lapenda (felipe.lapenda@ufpe.br) on 2015-03-13T11:37:59Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação Marcos de Arruda Filho.pdf: 2304465 bytes, checksum: a913e709981b50612fec04da21a0c790 (MD5) license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-13T11:37:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação Marcos de Arruda Filho.pdf: 2304465 bytes, checksum: a913e709981b50612fec04da21a0c790 (MD5) license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo analisar as relações existentes entre o conceito de Desenvolvimento Sustentável frente ao Mecanismo de Desenvolvimento Limpo, por meio da comparação e da interpretação dos princípios, mecanismos e bases de concepção dos mesmos e da análise de projetos geradores de créditos de carbono. Foram analisados, até julho de 2013, 659 Documentos de Concepção de Projeto que englobam os 310 projetos de MDL que tem o Brasil como país anfitrião e que já estão gerando créditos de carbono. Também foram levantados e analisados os quatro projetos de MDL brasileiros que situam-se no estado de Pernambuco. Foi feita uma caracterização dos projetos quanto à redução de CO2 até o momento, analisados a distribuição por escopo setorial e os países participantes juntamente com o Brasil. Para a realização do estudo, inicialmente foi levantado material bibliográfico do assunto em questão. Procedeu-se então uma documentação indireta e uma abordagem dedutiva do objeto em estudo. Utilizou-se o Método Relacional das Homologias para a análise dos projetos de MDL, comparando os resultados obtidos através de suas similaridades. Foram elaborados critérios de análise de dados para cada um dos atributos em estudo: econômicos, ambientais e sociais. Na análise dos atributos sociais dos projetos de MDL brasileiros, as variáveis Comunidade local, Condições de trabalho, Projetos sociais, Cursos de capacitação e Economia local foram as mais citadas. Emprego, Tecnologia, Crescimento econômico, Geração de Impostos e Energia foram as variáveis econômicas mais citadas. Os atributos ambientais mais citados foram uso e geração de Energia Limpa, Redução dos GEE, Redução da poluição, diminuição do uso de Combustíveis Fósseis e Conservação dos recursos naturais. Na região Nordeste do país encontram-se em atividade 87 projetos de MDL, distribuindo-se pelos estados, sendo quatro deles no estado de Pernambuco. No que tange aos atributos sociais, os DCP dos projetos pernambucanos deram maior ênfase ao crescimento da economia local e à preocupação com a comunidade do entorno do empreendimento. Os atributos econômicos que obtiveram maior ênfase foram o de Energia, uma vez que a maior parte dos projetos encontra-se nesse escopo setorial, e a de Crescimento Econômico No que tange aos atributos ambientais, pode-se afirmar que o texto dos DCP analisados traz uma forte ligação entre todos eles, citando-os de forma frequente. Os atributos mais citados foram Energia e Combustíveis Fósseis, também em virtude da maioria dos projetos estarem situados em escopos setoriais correlatos a esses temas. Na segunda parte da análise, tem-se que a relação Desenvolvimento sustentável e mercado de carbono, apresenta-se como sendo uma forma pecuniária de tratar o meio ambiente, se tornando ineficaz. Por fim nota-se que a relação desenvolvimento sustentável e mercado de carbono é um assunto que tem muito a ser debatido e explorado.

ITC/USA 2011 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Seventh Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2011 / Bally's Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada / The next generation of telemetry systems will rely heavily on XML-based standards. Multiple standards are currently being developed and reviewed by the T&E community, including iNET's Metadata Description Language (MDL), the XML-version of IRIG 106, Chapter 9 (TMATS XML), the Instrumentation Hardware Abstraction Language (IHAL), and the Data Display Markup Language (DDML). In this paper, we share design considerations for developing XML-based T&E standards, gained from our experiences in designing IHAL and DDML.

ITC/USA 2011 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Seventh Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2011 / Bally's Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada / Describing data formats has gone a long way in providing a common thread for moving test programs from one test range to another without incurring massive code rewrites. The introduction of the IRIG 106-93 standard provided the Telemetry Attributes Transfer Standard (TMATS) to achieve interoperability between the test article and ground processing system. The integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) Metadata Description Language (MDL) extends the concept to include descriptions of the equipment configuration and setup. This MDL declarative language is both vendor neutral and vendor customizable (where needed) and extends interoperability down to the individual components of the instrumentation system. This paper describes the current state of MDL and its use across intended vendor lines.

ITC/USA 2011 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Seventh Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2011 / Bally's Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada / Today's telemetry systems need to be highly configurable and easily extensible to support a constantly growing number of data acquisition/transmitting components from different manufacturers. One way to achieve this goal is through a standardized descriptive language that can define the system structure as well as end-node devices. The integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) program has explored such a possibility by creating a series of standards to define how devices are configured and interoperate with each other. As one of the standards created by the iNET program, the Metadata Description Language (MDL) specifies a common interchange language that defines and configures a Telemetry Network System (TmNS). MDL Instance Documents are used to exchange test requirements, data formats and configuration information among the devices within a TmNS system. MDL, together with other standards created in the iNET program, serve as a foundation for assembling a modern telemetry system. This paper starts with an overview of the MDL-based system description architecture. A typical configuration workflow of an MDL-based system is then described. iNET functionality implementations for new and legacy devices are used as examples to illustrate the power of MDL-based design, as well as the challenges and issues associated with the implementation of the MDL standard. We explain and evaluate the design decisions for a new product, the L-3 NetDAS Recorder, as the case study. We also discuss how a legacy Data Acquisition Unit (DAU) acting as an LTC Data Source Unit can be updated to support MDL based iNET functionality. Our practice shows that more efficient data acquisition systems can be designed and implemented using the metadata definition language as a core tool for equipment and system description. We conclude the paper with design tradeoffs and discussions.

ITC/USA 2012 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Eighth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2012 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / In telemetric network systems, data extraction is often an after-thought. The data description frequently changes throughout the program so that last minute modifications of the data extraction approach are often required. This paper presents an alternative approach in which automation of measurement extraction is supported. The central key is a formal declarative language that can be used to configure instrumentation devices as well as measurement extraction devices. The Metadata Description Language (MDL) defined by the integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) program, augmented with a generalized measurement extraction approach, addresses this issue. This paper describes the TmNS Data Extractor Tool, as well as lessons learned from commercial systems, the iNET program and TMATS.

The growth of network and distributed technologies in flight test instrumentation (FTI) has provided the benefits of flexibility, scalability, and compatibility with prevalent computing capabilities. However, to achieve these capabilities, the complexity of each piece of FTI and the overall system has increased dramatically. Even with systems composed of equipment from a single vendor, it is important to have management systems that provide the flexibility to adapt quickly to various system configurations and present unified information to the flight test users. The growth of network technologies and then standardized approaches such as iNET standards becoming accepted IRIG 106 standards is leading to the growth of multi-vendor systems. These multi-vendor systems further increase the need for rapidly reconfigurable management systems. This paper describes a constraints engine we have developed to enable flexible system management systems and reflects on how these techniques have been used successfully in the iNET System Manager.

Configuring flight test systems can be a complex process due to the large number of choices that must be made. Making these choices requires system knowledge to build a working configuration in an efficient and timely manner. Historically, flight test systems have embedded this system knowledge in code. The limitation with these approaches is that any change or addition to the system knowledge is costly due to the significant work required to update and maintain the software. We see the philosophy of constraints as a promising path toward addressing these issues. In the context of flight test configuration, a set of constraints defines the limits of how a system may be configured to perform specific tasks. This paper describes an approach for simplifying configuration by moving the system knowledge out of hardcoded business rules and into a flexible architecture that leverages constraints for validation of system configurations.