International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-21, 2004 / Town & Country Resort, San Diego, California / Much effort has been spent on developing physical layer standards to ease multi-vendor inter-operability. However as anyone familiar with real-life system integration knows a large gap exists in defining system configuration and set-up, not just between vendors but also between different groups on the base. Different solutions to this problem have been attempted (for example TMATS). However, the emergence of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) as a commercial standard presents a new opportunity to define a powerful and extensible tool for data-interchange between different systems. This paper introduces the self-documenting standard for information exchange that is XML. A generic model for flight test data acquisition is presented. Finally, an XML vocabulary (or schema) based on this model is proposed. This schema could form the basis for an industry wide XML standard to simplify the problem of data interchange between vendors, between programs, even between different databases in the same organisation.

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 / A few years ago XidML was introduced as an open XML standard for capturing the meta-data associated with flight test instrumentation (FTI). This meta-data schema was broken down into elements for Parameter (name, range, units, offset-binary), Instrument (name, serial number, misses-to loss), Package (bits per word, words per minor-frame, rate) and Link (name, type) and so on. XidML remains one of the only published schema for FTI meta-data and with XidML 3.0 many simplifications have been introduced along with support for nested tree structures and a single instrument schema allowing anyone to define the validation for instruments from any vendor. This paper introduces the XidML schema and describers the benefits of XidML 3.0 in particular. It begins by giving a brief description of what XidML is and describes its history and motivation. The paper then outlines the main differences between XidML-3.0 and earlier versions, and how the XidML schema has been further refined to meet the challenges faced by the FTI community. As an example of usage the FTIManager software developed at Eurocopter will be briefly presented in order to illustrate the XidML ability to describe a multi-vendor FTI configuration.

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 / XidML is an open, vendor neutral, XML based standard for the FTI community used to capture the metadata associated with flight test instrumentation and data acquisition networks. This paper discusses the difference between metadata and meta-metadata, how these concepts apply to XidML and an optional schema, XdefML. The paper also describes how Settings and their validation may be applied to a Generic package definition. Some examples are given of how the current version XdefML can be leveraged to auto-generate graphical user interfaces that are both feature rich and incorporate sophisticated error checking and data validation.

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 / The paper discusses the history and background of metadata standards for the FTI community over the last 20 years and speculates on how they may develop in the future. It starts by highlighting the deficiencies of proprietary formats and the resulting problems. It then discusses the characteristics and features of specific industry standard metadata descriptions such as TMATS, iHAL, MDL and XidML in addition to their levels of maturity. The attributes of what constitutes a fully mature FTI metadata standard is then discussed. It is suggested that any standard must serve at least two functions, Configuration and Validation, and outlines what exactly each means. Finally, it is argued that there is now a significant level of convergence and consensus in both the scope and application of metadata, and in the associated concept of operations (ConOps). The details of this Concept of Operations are then discussed along with suggestions as to how this may evolve in the coming years.

ITC/USA 2013 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Ninth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 21-24, 2013 / Bally's Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV / With the advent of networked based data acquisition systems comes the opportunity to acquire, transmit and store potentially very large volumes of data. Despite this, and the increased size of the data acquisition networks, the use of tightly integrated hardware, and setup and analysis software enable the FTI engineer to save time and increase productivity. This paper outlines how the use of innovative bus packetizer technology and the close integration of FTI software can simplify this process. The paper describes how packetizer technology is used to acquire data from avionics buses, and how it packages this data in a format that is optimized for network based systems. The paper further describes how software can simplify the process of configuring avionics bus monitors in addition to automating and optimizing the transport of data from various nodes in the acquisition network for transmission to either network recorders or via a telemetry link.