International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / In today's aerospace environment, the watchwords and demands for system developers have become "faster, cheaper, better". The use of an industry standard bus and Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) hardware can substantially lower design time, cost, and enhance performance. This paper describes the Flexible Airborne/Space Data Acquisition System (FAStDAS) design for the MSTI series satellites. While the FAStDAS architecture was designed for the specifics of the MSTI satellites, the approach provides the flexibility for use on a wide variety of airborne and space applications.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The VME bus is used in a wide variety of airborne applications. The particular application of the VPE is for use in the MSTI satellite to provide spacecraft telemetry. The VME based PCM encoder can provide telemetry from any stand alone data acquisition system. This paper describes the VME based PCM encoder. Since this design is ruggedized to meet the launch and environmental requirements for space, it can be used in any airborne VME system.

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 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 / Over the last few years, PCM based data acquisition systems have become known as "Traditional PCM" systems. This terminology modification is a sign of the evolution of the next generation of telemetry/data acquisition systems based on network topologies. This has come about due to users clamoring for functionality that has not been available in the traditional systems, such as supporting increased data rates, providing access to onboard archived data, supporting on-the-fly reconfiguration, and simplifying data distribution and delivery. The iNET standard is using standard network technology to improve device interoperability and data acquisition. To minimize impact on existing data acquisition system devices, the initial effort of this approach has included the transmission of "Traditional" fixed PCM frames within a network message based structure. This approach, however, squanders network bandwidth, as a PCM frame includes all samples of all channels, and requires significant processing power for even simple tasks. Delivering on the promise of a more flexible transmission method requires a change in how data is acquired in the data acquisition devices. The iNET standard defines such a packet based transport system, which supports channel based packet formats besides "Traditional PCM" to efficiently deliver data products. This paper will provide background on the benefits of these methods and an overview of methods by which these formats can be implemented.

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 / Most of today's aircraft used for the commercial transport of passengers or military aircraft still rely on simple technology such as cables, connectors and sensors to provide power, avionics data, control system, aircraft instrumentation etc. throughout the vehicle's life-cycle for flight monitoring and fault diagnosis. Despite a marked improvement in the quality and reliability of these components, they continue to be the main cause of failures due to corrosion, misuse, improper installation, etc, using-up endless man-hours to troubleshoot, repair and upgrade them. Wireless monitoring by telemetry of some of the critical systems has been in use for some time as a point to point data link designed to provide vital information, potentially improving the safety and efficiency of any flight. Aircraft manufacturers are now looking at the use of wireless networks to replace current data buses used for the transfer of data between avionics systems and their sensors as well as for the control of some of the surface actuators. Wireless networks used in this way could reduce the amount of cabling and its associated weight as well as simplify the re-routing of connections making upgradation less expensive and quicker, again a benefit to airlines. Despite many benefits there is a potentially serious security issue by means of an introduction of a backdoor into the system, meaning that before aircrafts become network-enabled, all the security issues must be identified in full and dealt with.

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 / SFSS is a universal, small, and low cost, functionally redundant flight termination system (FTS) that incorporates encoding, processing and TSPI capabilities, provides critical health/safety/welfare monitoring and allows for highly efficient telemetering of weapon application and FTS data. The SFSS is intended as a solution to provide weapon system developers, test agencies, and range safety officers the ability to track, monitor, and if necessary, terminate all types of weapon systems. The SFSS components are intended to significantly reduce the recurring costs and improve the quality of test support by minimizing physical intrusion into weapon systems, and potentially eliminating the need for warhead removal. In addition, a common hardware suite assists in reducing the overall system cost of acquisition, a key element in today's world of stressed budgets. The SFSS is designed to interface with newly developed weapon systems, while providing the capability to be integrated into existing weapon systems with nominal modifications to the platform. The SFSS development is a multi-disciplinary effort, whose participating organizations include industry suppliers, range and system safety representatives, and technical offices from all branches of the armed services, as well as the weapons vendors to ensure that applicable technical and regulatory requirements are met. The original requirements for the project were defined within the SFSS System Performance Specification (SPS), which has undergone a number of updates as the design effort has progressed from concept to assembly and debug of the prototype components. This paper will provide an overview of the overall program status, key features of the SFSS including features added during development, critical design challenges, and additional activities planned to enhance the functionality of the system.

The Wake Forest University Physiology/Pharmacology (WFU Phys./Pharm.) electrophysiology research labs currently carry out memory research by recording neural signals from laboratory animals tethered to nearby signal conditioning and recording equipment. A wireless neural signal recording system is desirable because it removes the cumbersome wires from the animal, allowing it to roam more freely. The result is an animal that is more able to behave as it would in its natural habitat, thus opening the possibility of testing procedures that are not possible with wired recording systems. Sampling rates obtained by conventional RF wireless systems tend to be very low (800Hz) since the bandwidth of these RF wireless systems is low. This is because interfacing methods (RS-232) needed to develop RF systems are slow (57.6Kbps). Another shortcoming of RF systems is the high power consumption. This thesis presents development of embedded wireless system to replace wired systems. RF wireless system is developed to replace wired electrophysiology system. An infrared wireless system development is discussed to achieve higher sampling rates unachievable by RF wireless system. Infrared operate at data rates 4Mbps and high sampling rates can be achieved. For this thesis, Infrared system is interfaced to microcontroller using ISA interface. ISA bus is chosen as it operates (at rate of 8Mbytes/sec) faster than RS-232 and easy to program compared to other buses such as PCI. Also, Infrared systems consume low power than RF systems. Power consumption is an important consideration as application in hand is battery powered. / Master of Science

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 / Experimental science payloads vary greatly in design for the purpose of performing specialized tasks. As such, their supporting control, data acquisition and telemetry subsystems are often expensive custom designed units with specific abilities, thus limiting reuse. This paper presents a payload control, data acquisition and telemetry system capable of providing a range of functionality to science payloads as a consequence of its accommodating architecture, programmability, and physical modular design. Details of the system and its capabilities are presented followed by an actual configuration of the system as the backbone of a micro-electro-mechanical-systems technology demonstration payload designed for suborbital flight.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-21, 2004 / Town & Country Resort, San Diego, California / The IntelliBus network protocol provides an enabling technology for the next generation data acquisition system. IntelliBus provides greater data acquisition efficiency and reliability compared to other network protocols. This paper discusses the design considerations and implementation of a next generation Data Acquisition System incorporating IntelliBus with emphasis on the advantages of the new architecture over existing acquisition systems.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-21, 2004 / Town & Country Resort, San Diego, California / Serial interfaces (RS232, RS422/485) have been the standard method of communications in traditional data acquisition systems. The role of these interfaces has been to supply a simple setup and control path between a host and the data acquisition master and little else. Today’s distributed data acquisition systems (DAS), which are comprised of many types of components including Ground Support Computers (GSC), Pilot Control Units (PCU), Data System Control Units (DSCU), Solid State Recorders (SSR), Data Acquisition Units (DAU) and Cockpit Instrumentation Data Systems (CIDS), are ideally suited to the use of Ethernet for not only setup functions, but for the distribution of acquired data and status to an unlimited number of users. Besides the obvious advantage of higher data rates, Ethernet provides other benefits such as greater data integrity, multi-host capability, and common programming interfaces. This paper details the integration of new L3 Communications - Telemetry East (L3-TE) Ethernet based software and hardware components that are part of the Comanche Data Systems equipment suite.