ITC/USA 2014 Conference Proceedings / The Fiftieth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 20-23, 2014 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, CA / One of the core philosophies of the integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) project is to leverage standard networking technologies whenever possible to reduce development cost and to allow standard networking applications to function. This also provides the best long-term scalability to new unforeseen applications much as the Internet has grown through its open standards. The Developmental Flight Test phase is currently under way to perform initial flight testing of the Test Article (TA) Network. This paper provides an overview of the planned TA Network Testing and the expected results. Current results from flight testing will be presented at the conference.

ITC/USA 2014 Conference Proceedings / The Fiftieth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 20-23, 2014 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, CA / One of the core philosophies of the integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) project is to leverage standard networking technologies whenever possible to both reduce development cost and to allow standard networking applications to function properly. This also provides the best long-term scalability to new unforeseen applications much as the Internet has grown through its open standards. Unfortunately, the Radio Frequency (RF) channel characteristics do not fully lend themselves to the typical physical layer approaches utilized by Internet Protocol (IP) technologies. The iNET project is developing the Telemetry Network System (TmNS) RF Network to provide a flexible two-way IP telemetry capability. The Developmental Flight Test (DFT) phase is currently under way to perform initial flight testing of the RF Network. This paper provides an overview of the planned RF network testing and the expected results. Current results from flight testing will be presented at the conference.

The integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) radios provide a two-way telemetry link that interconnects the airborne instrumentation system with ground-based systems. This capability brings the flight test telemetry domain into the realm of the more classic mesh networks in a mobile ad-hoc environment. The underlying radio frequency (RF) communication protocols defined in the iNET standards support a variety of classic networking protocols. The scheduling algorithms between Link Managers and radios can operate as a collision network, like classic Ethernet. This paper describes the communication protocols and scheduling algorithms of the iNET radios, and it provides results of their use in a self-scheduling algorithm such as a classical token ring network.

ITC/USA 2006 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Second Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 23-26, 2006 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / In a quest to provide networked communication to test assets at all of the Major Range and Test Facility Bases (MRTFB), the integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) Program was formed. A study was accomplished outlining five environments that encompass the work of these MRTFBs. The first of these environments to be advanced towards networked communication is the Aeronautical Environment. In order to develop these technologies, a test platform is proposed, realized, and tested. This airborne test platform will be used for concept and product testing and validation of the three portions of the Telemetry Network System (TmNS); the vehicle network, vNET, the radio frequency network (RF), rfNET, and the interface to the ground network, gNET. This paper will present the baseline system configuration, describe its operation, and detail RF link testing results.

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 / Incorporating network-based telemetry components into a flight test article creates new types of network-based data flows between a test article and a telemetry ground station. The emerging integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) Standard defines new, network-based data delivery protocols which can produce various network data flows. Augmenting existing Serial Streaming Telemetry (SST) data flows with these network-based data flows is crucial to enhancing current flight test capabilities. This paper briefly introduces the network protocols referenced in the iNET Standard and then identifies the various data flows generated by network-based components which comply with the iNET Standard. Several combinations of SST and TmNS data flows are presented and the enhanced telemetry capabilities provided by each combination are identified. Identifying time intervals of unused telemetry network bandwidth explicitly for reallocation to other test articles is also addressed.

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 / A previous paper was presented detailing the design and testing of the first networked demonstration system (ITC 2006) for iNET. This paper extends that work by testing a commercial off the shelf (COTS) solution for the wireless network connection of the Telemetry Network System (TmNS). This paper will briefly discuss specific pieces of the airborne and ground station system but will concentrate on the new wireless network link, how it was tested, and how well it performed. Flight testing results will be presented accessing the performance of the wireless network link.

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 / At the 2007 iNet Technology Demonstrator multiple vendors are asked to participate to develop and evaluate protocols for time synchronization, configuration identification and heterogeneous data packet transfer. The iNet initiative from RCC is aimed at focusing and collating telemetry network developments within the wider sphere of commercial and military network developments. The KAM-500 is an inherently networked data-acquisition system offering seamless gateways to many heterogeneous data sources, such as different sensor devices, avionics-busses, networks and video sources. This paper offers insights into the impact of traffic and network configuration on the performance of heterogeneous data acquisition in a homogenous-switched network based a 1588 enabled controller module.

ITC/USA 2014 Conference Proceedings / The Fiftieth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 20-23, 2014 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, CA / This is the story of three projects, which use three different research funding sources, coming together to demonstrate a small, but complete, instrumentation system that advances several technologies. The Onboard Smart Sensor (OSS) project is a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project that incorporates IEEE 1451.4 sensors into an existing Common Airborne Instrumentation System (CAIS) based instrumentation system. These sensors are "smart" in that they can self-identify basic information via a Transducer Electronic Data Sheet (TEDS). The Enhanced Query Data Recorder (EQDR) is being developed under the T&E Science & Technology Spectrum Efficient Technology (S&T SET) portfolio. This recorder is based on the integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) specifications. One of the objectives of iNET is to be able to query a recorder in real-time and transfer the request across a network telemetry link. The third project provides Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) backfill to compensate for dropouts. One of the envisioned applications enabled by the iNET architecture is the ability to provide PCM displays in the control room that do not have dropouts. This is called PCM Backfill. The basic scenario is that PCM is both transmitted (as it traditionally has been via serial streaming telemetry (SST)) and recorded onboard. When dropouts occur, a request over the telemetry network is made to the recorder (the EQDR in this case) and the dropped portions of the PCM stream are sent over the telemetry network to backfill the ground display. By adding a PCM-to- Ethernet/iNET bridge, the OSS and legacy instrumentation system can provide data to both the standard PCM and to the EQDR. Combined, this mini-system demonstrates a vision of having intelligence and networking ability across the entire instrumentation system – from sensor to display.

ITC/USA 2006 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Second Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 23-26, 2006 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / The Central Test and Evaluation Investment Program (CTEIP) Integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) program is currently testing a wireless local area networking (WLAN) in an L-band telemetry (TM) channel to evaluate the feasibility and capabilities of enhancing traditional TM methods in a seamless wide area network (WAN). Several advantages of networking are real-time command and control of instrumentation formats, quick-look acquisition, data retransmission and recovery (gapless TM) and test point real-time verification. These networking functions, and all others, need to be tested and evaluated. The iNET team is developing a WLAN based on 802.x technologies to test the feasibility of the enhanced telemetry implementation for flight testing.

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