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 / Hypersonic test vehicles require extensive data acquisition in order to accurately determine and refine engine performance. The increasing speed of scramjet engines places new constraints on data manipulation and system control. A compact modular flight computer has been developed that has high speed analog data acquisition, a programmable high data rate PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) encoder, compact data storage, and high speed I/O (Input/Output) capabilities. Principle to the design is the thermal management required for space environments. A functional overview is presented together with a summary of the analog performance. The integration of future capability requirements is also discussed.

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 / At about Mach number 10 and above, a high energy plasma field forms around a vehicle. This plasma sheath has a high attenuation factor that can cause communications black out. No practical solutions to communicating through a plasma sheath are known. In addition to standard real time data needs for test, a driving requirement to solve this problem is that most solutions will have to be designed into the vehicle. Modifications of vehicles designed to travel at these Mach numbers, especially any exterior modifications, will be extremely difficult due to effects on aerodynamics, thermal protection, and the materials used. A list of possible solutions to communications through hypersonically induced plasma has been collected over several years. This list was added to and verified during the Workshop on Communications through Plasma during Hypersonic Flight. Pros and cons of these potential solutions have been discussed and documented as well. The workshop also included a vote by the attending experts on what solutions are most promising. This paper reviews these solutions, their pros and cons, and a recommended way forward to solving this problem.

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