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 / CTEIP has launched the integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) project to foster advances in networking and telemetry technology to meet emerging needs of major test programs as well as within the Major Range and Test Facility Base’s. This paper describes the objective of the vNET concept demonstration to provide a test vehicle instrumentation network architecture that can support additional capabilities for data access to the test vehicle. Three specific iNET system needs have been identified as being desirable as the basis for evaluating a Concept of Operation through this demonstration project. These three key areas are Data Mining, Gapless Telemetry, and Error Free Data delivery.

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 / The integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) environment is meant to build and improve on the existing unidirectional legacy telemetry links. The optimized network would have to be capable of providing bi-directional, spectrally efficient, reliable, dynamically allocated, real time or near real time access to video and other types of test data over a shared bandwidth, high capacity network. Developed specifically for providing a reliable means of communications for large numbers of users, cellular technology seems particularly suited to addressing iNET’s needs. This paper investigates the creation of a cellular model for enhanced throughput for data users wherein a user would dynamically be allocated high data rates dependent on parameters such as the received signal to noise ratio (SNR). Our future work will develop the average data performance, comparing both the time division multiple access (TDMA) and code division multiple access (CDMA) environments for potential application in iNET.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-21, 2004 / Town & Country Resort, San Diego, California / The HDF5 (Hierarchical Data Format) data storage family is an industry standard format that allows data to be stored in a common format and retrieved by a wide range of common tools. HDF5 is a widely accepted industry standard container for data storage developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The HDF5 data storage family includes HDF-Time History, intended for data processing, and HDF-Packet, intended for real-time data collection; each of these is an extension to the basic HDF5 format, which defines data structures and associated interrelationships, optimized for that particular purpose. HDF-Time History, developed jointly by Boeing and NCSA, is in the process of being adopted throughout the Boeing test community and by its external partners. The Boeing/NCSA team is currently developing HDF-Packet to support real-time streaming applications, such as airborne data collection and recording of received telemetry. The advantages are significant cost reduction resulting from storing the data in its final format, thus avoiding conversion between a myriad of recording and intermediate formats. In addition, by eliminating intermediate file translations and conversions, data integrity is maintained from recording through processing and archival storage. As well, HDF5 is a general-purpose wrapper, into which can be stored processed data and other data documentation information (such as calibrations), thus making the final data file self-documenting. This paper describes the basics of the HDF-Time History, the extensions required to support real-time acquisition with HDF-Packet, and implementation issues unique to real-time acquisition. It also describes potential future implementations for data acquisition systems in different segments of the test data industry.

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 / There is growing concern that the U.S. military can no longer meet its domestic and international spectrum needs. Demand for this resource is growing at an exponential pace, both within the Department of Defense (DoD) and in the commercial sector (partly due to rapid growth in broadband wireless electronics). A microcosm of these challenges is evident in flight test operations, where there is a growing need for advanced spectrum assignment, frequency deconfliction, and scheduling optimization decision support capabilities. This paper describes research aimed at investigating how to optimize frequency scheduling, dynamic assignment, and real-time metrics adjustment to promote assured access to the electronic spectrum, including emerging technology developments to support that need.

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 / Emerging and next-generation test instrumentation increasingly relies on network communication to manage complex and dynamic test scenarios, particularly for uninhabited autonomous systems. Adapting wireless communication infrastructure to accommodate challenging testing needs can benefit from reconfigurable radio technology. Frequency agility is one characteristic of reconfigurable radios that to date has seen only limited progress toward programmability. This paper overviews an ongoing project to validate a promising chipset that performs conversion of RF signals directly into digital data for the wireless receiver and, for the transmitter, converts digital data into RF signals. The Software Configurable Multichannel Transceiver (SCMT) enables four transmitters and four receivers in a single unit, programmable for any frequency band between 1 MHz and 6 GHz.

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 / The integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) project was launched to foster network enhanced instrumentation and telemetry. The program is currently implementing an operational demonstration. That will involve installing and using a network enhanced instrumentation system on a helicopter. This demonstration will be used as a learning exercise for the implementation of network technologies. This paper will give a brief description of the operational demonstration. Then it will explore the need for an Authority to Operate (ATO) and describe how one was obtained.

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 / The nXCVR-2000G transceiver is an 802.11a OFDM-based system undergoing performance studies that uses both simulation and laboratory tests. The multi-path channel model used in the simulation experiments is based on a telemetry multi-path channel model described in the iNET Telemetry Experimental Standard document. To date, the results using the simulation have been confirmed by outdoor laboratory tests. They show that multi-path has less impact on the OFDM performance when the channel spread is within a limit of 800ns; the same specified guard interval (GI) used by 802.11a. For example, with a channel spread of 144ns (τ1) and a reflection coefficient of -0.26dB (Γ1), the Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) is on the order of 2.5%. As the channel spread expands beyond the standard GI 800ns, the demodulated signal degrades. The performance penalty depends upon the channel spread factor and the total Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR).

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 / This paper describes research aimed at investigating how to help decision makers devise optimized frequency scheduling and management strategies, both for advanced planning and real-time metrics adjustment. Part of these investigations include research to (i) define the metrics, objectives, and constraints involved in optimal frequency allocation decision-making; (ii) harmonize competing, orthogonal goals when devising candidate solutions; and (iii) devise an architectural strategy for dynamic spectrum allocation and management.

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 critical element of the proposed iNET architecture is the development of a telemetry network that provides two-way communication between multiple nodes on both the ground and in the air. Conventional airborne telemetry is based on IRIG-106 Chapter 4 and provides only a serial streaming data path from the aircraft to the ground. The network-centric architecture of iNET requires not only a duplex communication link between the ground and the test article, but also a communication link that provides higher bandwidth performance, higher spectrum efficiency, and a transport environment that is capable of fully packetized Internet Protocol. This paper describes the development path followed by TTC in the implementation of its nXCVR-2000G, an OFDM 802-11a-based iNET-ready IP transceiver.

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 / Network-based telemetry systems are increasingly being used to improve the flexibility and longevity of flight test systems. Modern network-based flight test systems utilize large numbers of devices including high-speed network switches, data acquisition devices, recorders, and telemetry interfaces, all of which must be managed in a coordinated fashion. The move to network-based testing provides the ability to build a standards-based System Management interface which can status and control a diverse set of devices. The benefits include the ability to easily tailor System Management tools to support many different styles of user interactions and to quickly integrate new types of devices. While the new capabilities presented by System Management are exciting, the very openness of the system presents challenges to ensure that future growth will be seamlessly supported. This paper will discuss issues encountered while implementing flight test System Management tools for a network-based telemetry system.