International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Today’s flight test processing systems must handle many more complex data formats than just the PCM and analog FM data streams of yesterday. Many flight test programs, and their respective test facilities, are looking to leverage their computing assets across multiple customers and programs. Typically, these complex programs require the ability to handle video, packet, and avionics bus data in real time, in addition to handling the more traditional PCM format. Current and future telemetry processing systems must have an architecture that will support the acquisition and processing of these varied data streams. This paper describes various architectural designs of both staged data flow and stream computing architectures, including current and future implementations. Processor types, bus design, and the effects of varying data types, including PCM, video, and packet telemetry, will be discussed.

Synthetic Vision Systems (SVS) provide an aircraft pilot with a virtual 3-D image of surrounding terrain which is generated from a digital elevation model stored in an onboard database. SVS improves the pilot's situational awareness at night and in inclement weather, thus reducing the chance of accidents such as controlled flight into terrain. A terrain database integrity monitor is needed to verify the accuracy of the displayed image due to potential database and navigational system errors. Previous research has used existing aircraft sensors to compare the real terrain position with the predicted position. We propose an improvement to one of these models by leveraging the stream computing capabilities of commercial graphics hardware. "Brook for GPUs," a system for implementing stream computing applications on programmable graphics processors, is used to execute a streaming ray-casting algorithm that correctly simulates the beam characteristics of a radar altimeter during all phases of flight.