1273 – Real-time Action Recognition for Drones: A Comparative Study of State-of-the-art Models and 3D MobileNet
Mohammed El Amine Mokhtari & Matei Mancas & …. – University of Mons Belgium
This paper presents a study on the development of a lightweight model for action classification that can be implemented on edge devices for drones. The study compares several state-of-the-art models such as Transformers, LSTMs, Temporal shift module and Temporal segment networks, with the goal of achieving good performance and model efficiency. The results showed that these models failed to meet the requirements of drones in terms of accuracy and model weight. To overcome this limitation, the study proposed the use of small image classification models such as MobileNetV2, which achieved 20 times smaller model size compared to the previous models, but with a 10% loss in accuracy. To further improve the performance, the study also proposed the use of 3D MobileNet which achieved 14% better accuracy than the previous models and 20 times smaller model size. The proposed model is suitable for real-time action classification in drones and presents a promising solution for edge computing.
6687- OBERON family, GNSS solutions in Flight Test
Angel Labrador – Airbus DS Spain
Currently, knowledge of the position through Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) systems is widely disseminated not only at the industrial and military level (aircraft, autonomous vehicles, military vehicles…), but also at the user level (cars, mobile phones, cameras photos, electrical appliances…).
Both the different nations of the planet (through their proprietary systems: GPS, GLONASS, Galilelo, Beidu, IRNSS or QZSS) as well as the manufacturers and users themselves, continually seek how to maximize the precision of their own GNSS systems over those of their competitors.
This paper describes the evolution of the OBERON family, GNSS products developed in Flight Test to cover the different needs of both our clients and our own. Knowing the situation and trajectory at all times and with high precision of aircraft, people or material is essential in current FTI systems.
The OBERON equipment is made up of a commercial GNSS plus its own additional electronics. Depending on the project, the GNSS is programmed to obtain the information that is required and, depending on the OBERON equipment, this information can be sent in real time, stored in an internal memory for post-processing or both »
1871 – Real-time satellite solar cell performance monitoring using Cell Monitoring Package on board experiment
Manon Huguenin,
Dominique Vergnet – Airbus Defence and Space France
Airbus Defence and Space (ADS) has developed an embarked satellite experiment, the Cell Monitoring Package (CMP) together with a witness cell sample. This experiment was launched in 2019 aboard a commercial satellite, and is used to monitor on a daily basis the performance of a solar cell of interest for future space systems, in real environmental conditions.
The CMP is designed to have no impact on the satellite avionic electrical interfaces and reliability. It has a low mass and volume, and is self-supplied by the monitored solar cell, so that no supply is required from the satellite. It features a standard analog interface, so that no specific telemetry interface is required.
The CMP performs continuously a sweep of the solar cell Voltage-Current I(V) characteristic curve at about 1Hz. The corresponding telemetry of solar cell current, voltage and temperature are then processed on ground. The one-diode model describing the I(V) curve is fitted onto the received data. This model is then used to extract the key cell parameters indicating its performance. This process is automated and performed in real-time thanks to the OASIS (Open Analytic ServIces for Satellites) big data and analytics platform developed by ADS, and the daily values of the key performance indicators are recorded. The evolution of such parameters is
monitored to observe and quantify the in-flight performance evolution over the satellite mission duration.
8038 – Automated PCM
Placement
Fatih Haciomeroglu
& Rasit Uzun & Egemen Guclu & Mehmet Yilmaz – Turkey TAI
A custom software tool is developed to automate the parameter placement to PCM Frame task, which had been getting tougher as the real-time monitoring requests continues to change and increase throughout the T625 Project. The tool basically modifies the PCM related part of the instrumentation definition file (xidml file) by taking into account the telemeter requests which are fetched from our Parameter List (NPL). Placement is performed for both sensor parameters as well as avionic ones. The tool mimics the PCM placement of the FTI System configuration software (DAS Studio) provided by our Supplier (Curtiss-Wright). The system definition being based on an open xml standard (XidML) enabled us to implement this custom software tool.
371- Real-time acquiring, processing and visualizing large datasets during a wind tunnel campaign
Roel Baardman, Peter Faasse
and Pim Van Zutphen –NLR
In the European research program Clean Sky 2 SA2FIR, an acronym for “Simulator of Aerodynamic and Acoustic Fan IntegRation”, a generic test rig for wind tunnel testing is being developed to investigate the behaviour of a turbofan propulsion simulator. During the wind tunnel testing the SA2FIR test rig is subjected to widely varying environmental conditions, notably high temperatures and high rotational forces. Moreover, a huge number of sensors are mounted, both in the rotating and non-rotating parts. These sensor signals must be acquired and conditioned for off-board processing and storage inside the severely limited available space in the test
rig.
An integral part of the SA2FIR test rig is the Advanced Data Acquisition System (ADAS) which acquires all relevant sensor signals, and processes, visualizes and stores the resulting data. The system contains four data acquisition subsystems: i) Rotating Data Acquisition System including the telemetry system, which is located on the rotor, ii) Model Data Acquisition System, which is located in the wind tunnel model nacelle and a simulated wing section, and iii) the Inflow Data Acquisition System which is located outside the model, and iv) a low-sample rate pressure measurement system. All data is collected, processed and stored in the distributed Data Processing and Display System (DPDS). Data is exchanged with a safety and
health monitoring system.
The DPDS gathers and processes the data streams from the data acquisition subsystems which can be grouped into three main clusters: one Front End cluster containing ten computers which interface with the data acquisition hardware and two dedicated Proprietary Data Processing clusters for different end-users. The Wind Tunnel Interface is considered to be a Front End Computer as well, as it acquires settings/commands and data from the wind tunnel and provides data (status information) to the wind tunnel and safety advisory information to the Health Monitoring system.
The inter-process and inter-node communication within each cluster uses the Distributed Real-time Automation and Control Host Multi-platform Executive (DRACHME) kernel which has been specifically developed by NLR for this kind of applications. It provides a scalable system, running on one or more nodes, with real-time data sharing.
The SA2FIR ADAS will initially be used in two wind tunnel test campaigns, i) in the ONERA S1MA wind tunnel in the Modane Avrieux Center, France and ii) in the DNW Large Low-Speed Facility (LLF) in Marknesse, the Netherlands. »
Test Data acquisition Network & Recording
6908 – Moving towards a common and decentralized instrumentation architecture for ground and flight tests
Ghislain Guerrero, David Lefevre, Louis-Marie Lecoeur, Damien
Roux, Fabien Bichler, Bruno Soulier, Adrien Rikir and Benjamin Mersayeva – SAFRAN DATA SYSTEM
In response to the urgent climate challenge, Safran has an ambitious policy to support the transition to carbon-neutral aviation by 2050. New engine architectures, sustainable fuels, hybrid-electric technology, new materials and reduced weight: the Group is already reinventing the aeronautics industry of tomorrow.
Such effort implies a high amount of ground and flight test campaigns to mature the technologies, select the best options and validate the overall design. In this respect, the test means also need to be reinvented to offer the adequate capabilities.
This paper aims at describing the common approach followed by different entities of Safran Group to decentralize instrumentation architecture, to meet new needs and drive the industry forward. The principle of such an architecture can be summarized as follows: delivering the right information to the right place, at the right moment, in a robust and efficient way. «
3059 – Radome Design of Telemetry Antenna for 5th Generation Aircraft
Ayse Ozgul Ertanir Feza Mutlu & Duygu Kucukcelebi – Turkish Aerospace
Radome design for a conformal telemetry antenna has been an exceptionally challenging job for engineers due to the demanding RCS and structural requirements of advanced 5th generation aircrafts. Considering the frequency range and structural radome strength requirements for a S-band telemetry antenna, A-type sandwich multilayer radome layout was found to be most appropriate. It is expected from a radome design that it should not disrupt radiation pattern of telemetry antenna and be consistent with the aircraft structure and aerodynamics. The first rule in designing a radome is to have a transmission coefficient close to linear 1. Radome design analysis is started by modelling layout transmission characteristics. After obtaining the desired transmission characteristics of the radome layout by CST Microwave Studio 2019 software unit cell solution, full scale radome analysis is started. During the full-scale radome analysis, effects of the structure on antenna radiation pattern are investigated.
718 – Encryption of Telemetry over IP
Jean-Guy Pierozak, Cédric Tavernier – Hensoldt Nexeya France
Telemetry systems are evolving from Continuous Streaming (IRIG106-CH4) to Packet Streaming (IRIG106-CH10, iNET, TmNS…), resulting in the latest version of IRIG106-CH7 mixing both. In Telemetry, packet streaming relies on UDP protocol which is unidirectional and allows some
loss of packets.
Besides, the need to secure the confidentiality of TM data is growing, leading to encrypt part or all of it.
DTLS protocol (Datagram Transport Layer Security) is used to encrypt messages on UDP. It is becoming popular and is getting under standardization (as a Request For Comments has been published by the Internet Engineering Task Force). The security and the implementation have already been studied for some time and relies mostly on TLS protocol.
This article described DTLS protocol as a good candidate to encrypting TM messages as it is designed to prevent eavesdropping and falsifying messages.
4094 – Turnstile — A Novel Encryption Scheme
Malcolm Weir – Ampex Data Systems Corporation
The need for encryption throughout the telemetry industry has become ubiquitous. With commercial and governmental interests to protect, both data-at-rest (DAR) and data-in-transit (DIT) is now essential.
However, encryption is like seat belts and crash helmets: a nuisance until that moment when you really need the protection! The challenge for effective encryption, then, is a management scheme for the encryption keys that imposes as small of an additional workload on the operations staff.
Turnstile is an encryption scheme that combines tried, tested and trusted algorithms in such a way as to make recordings inaccessible even if an adversary has full access to, and control of, the test article. This allows engineers to configure a system with full encryption capabilities without having to « »re-key » » the unit regularly.
By employing existing algorithms, Turnstile benefits from the quality and trustworthiness of those algorithms and certifications (such as FIPS 140 or Common Criteria). Turnstile can be applied both to data-at-rest and data-in-transit applications with small variations. »
1981 – MARTA : a new system for launcher localization
Quentin Lacoste – CNES
MARTA is an experimentation for a new localization system for CSG launchers. It is based on a network of low cost telemetry stations installed all across CSG, it aims at finding the launcher position and velocity by Time and Frequency Difference Of Arrival (TFDOA).
Low cost and robust SDR telemetry receivers, synchronized by GNSS (better than 5nsRMS) and connected to a high performance IP network allows a Central Server to compute the location of the launcher. The signal-processing algorithm (Early-Late gates) and the localization process (Least mean square, Kalman filter) are mostly inspired from GNSS technologies. Those systems are implemented with extensive use of opensource libraries with high performance GPU acceleration for the most demanding calculations.
We present the system, its performances evaluations and the possibilities to install it on another spaceport than CSG. »
6200 – Real-Time Evaluation of an Ultra-Tight GNSS/INS Integration Based on Adaptive PLL Bandwidth
Gaël Pages & Benoît Priot & Guillaume Beaugendre – ISAE-SUPAERO France
In a desire to make transportation increasingly autonomous, the need for a robust and precise positioning system is essential. Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) is typically the technology of choice to provide positioning, velocity and timing (PVT) information. Standard GNSS receivers are based on scalar tracking loops (STL) in order to track the signal of each satellite in view independently. Although, in harsh environments, such as urban canyons, the GNSS signals are strongly degraded by multipaths, signal attenuation and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) phenomena which highly impacts the stability of the tracking loops and thus affects the robustness and the precision of the PVT solution. Other GNSS receiver architectures are proposed within the literature which overcome some of the weakness of a STL architecture. They are based on vector tracking loops (VTL) where each tracking loops is intimately related with the others through an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Moreover, enhancing the VTL with inertial measurement unit (IMU) information through an inertial navigation system (INS), in an ultra-tightly coupled manner, allows to account for local receiver dynamics. Thereby it is possible to narrow down the bandwidth of phase lock loop (PLL) thus improving the resilience to noise and the stability of the tracking loops. Works on vector delay and frequency lock loops (VDFLL) architectures show good results in specific environments but the real-time hardware implementation remains complex and data synchronization and calculation time management between the EKF and the tracking loops is not trivial to handle.
In this contribution, an alternative approach is proposed for a GNSS/INS ultra-tight coupling which is based on the VTL architecture but in which the PLL bandwidth is adapted according to inertial navigation system (INS) information. This approach uses the calculated pseudoranges and Doppler frequencies from the receiver hardware which are tightly coupled with the output of an INS in order to provide an estimated position, velocity and time (PVT) solution using an extended Kalman filter (EKF). The solution is then used to calculate Doppler frequency rates which are fed back to the loop filter of every channel at the same time, in order to adapt the phase lock loop (PLL) bandwidth. The proposed architecture has the advantage to be easily implementable on a System-on-Chip (SoC) component such as an FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays), with minor modifications on an existing GNSS receiver platform. Moreover, compared to classical vector-based solutions, it has two main implementation advantages: 1) data synchronization and timing issues are easily handled; 2) the navigation message is decoded in the loop, without the need to run scalar loops in parallel or having to store pre-downloaded ephemeris data, limiting therefore the area occupied on the FPGA and the use of additional resources for storage.
The proposed GNSS receiver architecture uses GPS L1/C and Galileo E1 signals and is composed of one acquisition module and 16 tracking channels (8 GPS and 8 Galileo) which are implemented within a FPGA (Zynq-Ultrascale). The EKF module is implemented on the ARM of the Zynq. The approach is tested with synthetic and real-world data, where different signal degradations occur. The ultra-tight hybrid STL/VTL architecture’s real-time implementation is analyzed and compared to a reference software defined receiver designed with Matlab. A detailed description of the the GNSS receiver hardware is given. »
984 – Unique Telemetry Requirements for a Hypersonic Telemetry System
Paul Cook – Curtiss Wright
With the various hypersonic vehicle developments happening today, there are several unique Telemetry requirements that differ from the ones used in everyday flight test that migrates from the standard products offered in our industry. This paper discusses the unique requirements based on the hypersonic use case, what and whys behind the list, and why are these unique from the airborne perspective and drive new design to full fill the requirement.
Gene Hudgins and Juana Secondine – TENA
TM often requires operators on location with receive system(s) or at a remote console, resulting in TDY for operators and possibly a shortage of operators to support all scheduled operations. A remote-control capability along with centralized data collection could eliminate existing personnel requirements at both the local system antenna site as well as the control facility, greatly reducing operational costs and providing insight to system status. Established in 2006 under the Test Resource Management Center (TRMC), the Joint Mission Environment Test Capability (JMETC) is a distributed LVC capability using a hybrid network solution for all classifications and cyber. The Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA) is the middleware selected for use in JMETC Secret Network (JSN) events and provides for real-time system interoperability, as well as interfacing existing range assets, C4ISR systems, and simulations; fostering reuse of range assets and future software systems. TENA and JMETC, in conjunction with Big Data Analytics (BDA) tools and techniques, allow for the most efficient use of current and future TM range resources via range resource integration, critical to validate system performance in a highly cost-effective manner. This presentation will inform the audience as to the current impact of TENA, JMETC, and BDA on the T&E community; as well as their expected future benefits to the range community and the warfighter.
2913 – BSS – Best Source Selector implementation and performances in a test range
Philippe Klaeyle, Florian Sandoz – SAFRAN Data Systems
Using a BSS in a test range brings multiple benefits such as expanding the area where telemetry can be used, as well as having multiple angles of visibility on the airframe that provides better opportunity to secure a good telemetry reception irrespective of the airframe manoeuvres resulting in some airborne antenna masking towards one of the ground antennas.
Usually the BSS is associated with multiple antennas located somewhat far from each other with the need to carry the telemetry signals to the main station and to have access continuously to the quality of each received signal.
This paper presents the different tasks expected from a BSS. Among others, the BSS needs to compensate for the delays introduced by the distance between the antennas and the associated infrastructure, and to gather information about the quality of the received signals in order to select the one that will result in the best performance. For an easy implementation in a station, the BSS has to interface the various receivers using different interconnection schemes like analog, PCM or direct Ethernet connections.
In addition, we present a validation method using an RF simulator to highlight the performance of a BSS when Data Quality Metric (DQM) is enabled, as well as to compare the performance when the data are provided through a physical digital link from the receivers or through Ethernet. «
2950 – SDR telemetry receivers demonstration for the next-gen CSG launcher tracking stations
Quentin Lacoste – CNES France
This paper presents the developpement of an SDR telemetry receiver with state of the art performances developped internally by CNES.
We describe :
– the station architecture, secured internet connexion, modular software, etc.
– the CPU implementation issues and solutions,
– the multysymbol viterbi demodulation of CPFSK telemetry,
– the soft reed solomon decoding algorithm presented in another paper for improved performances. »
8828 – UK National Spectrum Centre in Wales to Accelerate Spectrum Innovation and Testing – an update 3 years on
Anil Shukla & Andy King – Qinetiq Syeda Jilani – Aberystwyth University
Access to radio spectrum is critical for social and economic growth of the nations to support sustainability e.g. remote experimentation and new applications, such as autonomous vehicles, the Internet of Things (IoT), Telemetry, Tracking and Command (TTC) systems etc.
To accelerate radio spectrum innovations, that may go on to contribute to sustainability and support, testing and applications, and to address the global challenge of spectrum access for testing and experimentation, QinetiQ, in partnership with Aberystwyth University, are in the process of developing the concept of a UK National Spectrum Centre (NSC) in mid Wales.
The NSC aim is to create an ecosystem between academia, government and industry to maximise experimentation, testing, education, research and technology development. The aim is to provide a combination of technical expertise, cutting-edge facilities and assisted access to spectrum across a variety of different geographical locations and radio environments.
This presentation will outline how the concept could support sustainability, and then summarise the progress made to date on the centre’s development. The presentation will cover aspects such as education (MSc course), experimentation plans, highlight some of experimentation sites identified, and describe some of the spectrum monitoring kit purchased and measurements conducted and being experiments being planned. Future plans will also be described.
Acknowledgement: The authors acknowledge the support of UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) for their support on this contract. «
8528 – 5G Cellular Airborne Transceiver for AMT
Achilles Kogiantis, Joseph Landi, Paul Toliver – Peraton Labs United States
A novel 5G airborne transceiver has been designed and developed to support 5G cellular-based aeronautical mobile telemetry (AMT). To support operation at speeds to be encountered in airborne telemetry, the transceiver implements the Velocite solution for on-board Doppler pre-compensation. The unit is designed for meet the 5G-enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) service objectives. An overview is given of the airborne transceiver’s overall design approach that includes a commercial 5G mobile modem and a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based Doppler compensator. A description is given of the progress on the planned capabilities of the transceiver and the ground network architecture needed to support cellular telemetry, as well as system-level operation aspects. Finally, details are provided of specific design aspects and trade-offs to be considered for AMT, including a ruggedized design for integration with the test airframe to support AMT at the testing range.
5549 – Telemetry Spectrum Encroachment Update
Luc Falga – International Consortium of Telemetry Spectrum
A review of spectrum issues that can encroach on the future use of RF telemetry. The International Consortium for Telemetry Spectrum will review current status of agenda items that address telemetry to be presented at the 2023 World Radiocommunication Conference that telemetry vendors and users need to be aware of and potentially engage with their national administrations.
Sensors & Optical
1666 – Airborne test of a vector laser Doppler anemometer as true airspeed, angle of attack, and angle of sideslip sensor
Oliver Kliebisch & Peter Mahnke & Matthias Damm – DLR Germany
Active optical sensors can be used to remotely measure the undisturbed airflow around the aircraft. A key benefit is the capability so self-diagnose the lack of signal (e.g. icing) or signal degradation instead of silently corrupted measurement values. Laser Doppler anemometry (LDA) – sometimes referred to as continuous wave Doppler lidar – has been suggested as addition or replacement of classical air data sensors since the 70s. LDA is a coherent detection technique based on measuring the Doppler shift of laser light scattered by aerosol particles. Availability of compact and robust fiber laser technology as well as high-performance real-time data processing nowadays allow to build LDA systems with higher TRL which are more suitable for airborne applications.
We present results of flight testing a four channel Laser Doppler anemometer capable of measuring the full relative wind vector with a FPGA-based event detection processor. The system consists of a rack-integrated all-fiber optical module, the FPGA processing system and a modular transceiver head mounted in the floor of the aircraft. The LDA sensor has been integrated on the DLR Falcon 20 research aircraft. Testing has been performed in southern and northern Germany under different atmospheric conditions in order to evaluate the LDA performance especially in low aerosol (clear air) conditions and up to flight level 400. The measurements are compared to a reference provided by a five-hole probe in a noseboom of the aircraft. First results on correlation and accuracy will be presented as well as a statistical analysis of the measurement rates and the encountered particle statistics. «
9493 – LiDAR for in-flight accurate relative positioning
Israel Lopez – Airbus Defence and Space Spain
Airbus Defence and Space tests LiDAR sensors, a new technology to enhance the in-flight relative positioning between several aircrafts. LiDARs are seen as a key ingredient to autonomous driving, but it hasn’t seen as much traction in the world of aviation.
The aim is to assess this new sensor in real flight operation and pave the way for a new flight test mean and for final products. The data from this sensor will be checked against data from traditional sensors like GPS, GPS-RTK and photogrammetry from cameras.
There are others very promising flight testing use cases for the LiDAR like safe separation, aerial delivery, wing deformations and closure rate.
This paper will explain the use of a LiDAR for in-flight relative positioning. A LiDAR simulator tool has been developed in order to choose the best configuration for the tests in terms of LiDAR position, orientation, frame rate, resolution, field of view and scan pattern.
The simulated point cloud has several advantages. It is used to prepare the flight test plan, to analyze the theoretical measurement error, to feed deep learnings models and to validate the methodology to get the relative positioning.
8240 – Challenges regarding the Calibration of Vibration Sensors with a Digital Output
Michael Mende – SPEKTRA GmbH Germany
Most of the sensors for vibration measurements that are currently used in laboratories are based on analog sensor elements like piezos or variable capacities. Thus, calibration systems for such sensor may need different signal conditioners for different types of sensors but A/D conversion and signal processing is the same for all types. The calibration process is well defined and described in standards like ISO 16063-21.
However, in recent years, MEMS-based sensors, which were originally developed for automotive applications or consumer products, have also become better and better and are now finding their way more often into laboratory measurements. Such sensors have their own A/D converters and signal conditioners on board and may even process signals inside the sensor. Thus, the output is not an analog signal anymore but a digital data stream.
These sensors with a digital output challenge current calibration systems which usually have only analog inputs. But even if the calibration system manufacturer wants to implement a digital interface into the system, he will face the challenge that these sensors can come with a wide variety of digital interfaces like SPI, I2C, CAN, etc. Furthermore, most calibration standards were written for an analogue sensor world and do not fit to sensors with internal A/D converters and data preprocessing. This paper will give an overview over the challenges for calibration systems and laboratories and will try to give an outlook how to meet them and how a calibration system for such sensors can look like.
7648 – usage of Capacitive technology for Hydrogen chalenges : From analog to digital
Daniel Leroy & Jakkapong Saksrisuwan & Anne Marie Bonnet – Alliantech
Hydrogen rises many problems for its use in mobility, in particular security issues.
Its sensitivity to risks of explosions limits the applicable measurement technologies.
Capacitive technology, due to numerous qualities (ATEX compatible, non-contact measurement, static and dynamic measurement, etc.), is a relevant solution for hydrogen instrumentation: displacements, vibrations, humidity level, quality of fluids, bubble rate, rotor speed, tip timing, etc…
Alliantech engineering services presents its development work on a hybrid electronic solution combining the best of digital (versatility) with the support of analog (speed of measurement) for HUMS applications
4031 – Reliability of material strength tests of gas turbines using strain gages at high temperatures
Maksym Klymov, Oleksandr Pohuliaiko, Oleksii Kulikov, Ihor Vernyhora, Liudmyla Marynchenko – High Precision Measurements LLC – http://hpm-gages.com
The paper describes temperature impact on metrological parameters of strain gages, used in tests of gas turbines and jet engines at temperatures up to 1000°C. A design of tool for reproducing of deformations at high temperatures and measurement of parameters of strain gages is presented. A technique to consider the changes of parameters of strain gages for test data interpretation is proposed.
8333 – Development of a contactless measurement system for real time monitoring of a proprotors flapping angle
Fritz Boden – DLR Henk Jentink – NLR Rita Ponza – Hit09 Italy
To ensure the flight safety of a tilt-rotor aircraft, it is important to monitor the flapping motion of the proprotor in real time. Therefore, as part of the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking funded project « FLAPsense » (No. 785571), a sensor system is being developed that can perform this measurement task in a non-contact and real-time manner. The system, which is integrated into the proprotor assembly and rotates with the rotor hub, is based on a high-precision optical sensor method that provides the avionics system with the actual flapping motion of the rotor disc. As a continuation of the « part one paper » from ETTC ’21, the « part two paper » will provide a reminder of the details of the measurement task and present the latest achievements in terms of the FLAPsense sensor unit development. Finally, it gives an outlook on the next steps to bring the FLAPsense sensor system into flight.
Big data, AI & Machine learning & Virtual / distributed Testing
4138- Reduce Program Timelines and Scale Production with COTS-Based Testing
Javier Gutierrez – National Instruments Spain
HIL test is an effective method of software validation to find defects and bugs before aircrafts are launched. Due to complexity of each mission, bespoke technology is often used in the development of the test means used for validation and verification of the different systems and subsystems involved in the aircraft development.
While using COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) architectures for aircraft development is perceived to increase risk on timelines, new developments on these architectures allow to combine standard products with specialised, mission specific hardware. This combination can be used to great advantage to speed up development time and without increasing mission timing risk in the development of test equipment during the whole system lifecycle, from board level testing to system-level check out and integration validation.
In this paper we will cover how such platforms can be implemented, with brief description of its functional elements as well as measured results of implementations. «
4812 – How can the load on the telemetry link be meaningfully reduced and what is the advantage of reconfiguring the telemetry data in flight?
Colin Douglas – JDA Systems e.K. Germany Bernd Dippold – imc Test & Measurement GmbH
Regardless of which telemetry RF band (L, S, C band) is used, available bandwidth is becoming progressively limited. This is partly due to the constantly growing need for various vehicle test operations but is also happening at a time when the amount of measurement data that is being generated and recorded during those flight operations is growing. This is in part due to several factors:
• Measurement points where measured values are digitized with higher sampling rates.
• Higher available signal dynamic range, with 20 or 24-bit resolution.
• Video from onboard cameras and other video sources.
Completely new ways of working would become available if it was possible to transmit from the test vehicle to the ground station only those measurement data points which are important for a specific test and if the system could be reconfigured easily, quickly and securely from the ground station for the next test point. This sort of change would require a bi-directional telemetry connection between the ground station and the aircraft.
The cooperation between JDA Systems and imc Test & Measurement has resulted in a new generation of flight test solutions that are based on IRIG and other industry standards.
Part of the overall solution includes the telemetry link itself which is based on IRIG 106 Chapter 4/7. One of the fundamental innovations is that the telemetry not only transmits the measurement data from the aircraft to the ground station, but above all enables the telemetry data stream to be reconfigured, at short notice, during flight operations.
Imc Test & Measurement GmbH is an established manufacturer of high-end measurement and automation systems based in Berlin / Germany and has more than 30 years of experience in the field of mobile and stationary testing technology. The company is part of the Axiometrix Solutions Group, a leading provider of test solutions that includes globally recognized measurement technology brands.
JDA Systems is a long-established, privately owned telemetry company with a wide range of proven products for telemetry hardware and software providing the engine for the telemetry links between the aircraft and the ground station, and the evaluation of the measurement data transmitted to the ground station. JDA Systems has worked with the IRIG 106 standards for decades and were a founder member of the IRIG 106 Chapter 10 committee. »
4841 – Enhancing FTI
Reliability through Redundant Sensor Fault Detection and Identification using
MMSE Estimation
Leonardo Correa – Volocopter
This paper presents a study on using redundant sensors for Fault Detection, and Identification (FDI) in a flight test environment. The proposed method is based on the work of Jyrki Kullaa in « Detection, identification, and quantification of sensor fault » (Proceedings of ISMA, 2010) which proposed the use of Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) estimation for sensor fault identification. The study aims to evaluate the use of this method in a flight test scenario and its potential benefits in terms of increasing the robustness and reliability of the instrumentation system. The proposed method will be evaluated using simulations and experiments. The paper will also discuss the potential limitations and challenges of the proposed method and suggest possible future research directions.
3051 – Health
Monitoring System for Flight Test Instrumentation
Thiago Martins & Anderson Siqueira – EMBRAER Brazil Sergio Penna – ISEP Portugal
Detecting abnormal behavior of instrumented parameters is vital to a successful flight test campaign.
This paper presents a Health Monitoring System for aircraft instrumentation based on distributed database and parallel processing, being a valuable solution for increasing the efficiency and safety of flight test operations.
This system collects and stores sensor data acquired by the aircraft instrumentation in an open-source distributed NoSQL database, allowing for quick and scalable access to the data post-flight.
Additionally, the system uses parallel processing techniques for reducing and analyzing the data, detecting potential sensor failures, raising alerts to instrumentation engineers and providing preventive maintenance notifications.
6662 – OpenAi : State of the art & applications in instrumentation
Daniel Leroy & Yasser Boutaleb – Alliantech Maha Khemaja & Amani Brahem – ISSAT Sousse
Nowadays, metrology and instrumentation domains are constantly evolving while end-users are continuously expressing new needs and new use cases. Moreover, the combined evolution of electronics and computer science now provides a growing range of solutions that are difficult for a team of engineers to master entirely and to apply efficiently to a given problem. On the one hand, designing a solution that would most effectively meet the needs of users is a challenge that is difficult to achieve, especially when it comes to using traditional hardware and software development pipelines.
On the other hand, AI evolution and its applications today in hardware and software engineering allow specifically to assist developers in facing these challenges.
This article explores a set of use cases while highlighting the role that AI could play to help answer efficiently to these use cases. »
1011 – User Friendly Edge Computing in FTI Networks
Diarmuid Collins – Curtiss Wright
FTI acquisition networks typically require low-power, small-form-factor equipment that can capture and process data in rugged environments. Edge computing is a computing paradigm that brings data processing closer to the data source. In recent years, advances in low-power processors and the proliferation of user-friendly, single-board computers has made edge computing more accessible and powerful. These advances can be leveraged and integrated into an FTI network to provide for flexible data processing, both reducing post-processing requirements and providing services on the FTI network that were previously not feasible. In addition, standards like IRIG-106 Chapter 7 allow for more flexible transfer of native network traffic to the ground, allowing these edge computing devices to pass the processed data transparently to the ground.
This paper will address some of the approaches, showing how user-friendly data processing can be brought to the FTI network within existing power, weight, and size constraints. «
Video & image Processing
2970 – Application of a low-cost Structural Health Monitoring system to full-scale aerospace testing
Ceri Middleton & Peter Lambert & Eann Patterson – University of Liverpool UK Khurram Amjad – UK Atomic Energy Authority Richard Greene- Strain Solutions Ltd UK André Kupferschmied & Erwin Hack – Empa Switzerland Linden Harris – Airbus Operations UK Ltd
A prototype low cost, low volume Structural Health Monitoring system, manufactured from COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) components, has been installed in full-scale aerospace tests.
Sensor modules have been designed for installation at regions of interest, where a control computer with a custom designed GUI (Graphical User Interface) allows control of multiple modules, and controls access to raw data and processed outputs saved on an external server. The modules contain optical and infrared camera sensors, and accept strain gauge input, allowing full-field DIC (Digital Image Correlation) and CATE (Condition Assessment by Thermal Emission) data to be generated. Data collection and processing is carried out using an on-board credit-card sized computer, and the full-field data outputs are then processed further using image decomposition, which allows quantitative comparison of data over time for condition monitoring.
The integrated system was installed by Airbus personnel on a full-scale fuselage test, with remote assistance from the system design team. A sensor module was mounted with a view of the region of interest, where damage was known to be present. The surface was prepared with a speckle pattern to allow DIC data collection, and a strain gauge was attached to the fuselage outside the field-of-view.
The loading conditions were not suitable for CATE data to be collected, however DIC strain data showed crack development into the field of view of the visible camera sensor. Analysis of the DIC data using image decomposition indicates a quantitative measure of the damage increase over time.
This project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 820951. The opinions expressed in this abstract reflect only the authors’ view and the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
6396 – Digital Image Correlation based measurement in flight, how to deal with variable lighting?
Francois Lefebvre-Albaret – AIRBUS Guillaume Colantonio – Expleo Renaud Gras – Eikosim
In this contribution, consequences of variable lighting on a DIC-based measurements during flight test are addressed.
In the past, several researches have been led on the topic of measurement of aircraft deformable parts in flight. Among them, we can mention wing or blade deformations in flight.
Here, we address the issue of nacelle deformation. Because of its complex geometry, it is subject to shadings and shadows caused by the pylon and the wing on its upper surface.
Taking into account variable lighting implies an adaptation of physical measurement setting, ground tests, flight test procedures and post-processing chain. Each of these aspects are addressed in this contribution.
8579 – Time Synchronization for non-conventional Instrumentation Cameras for Flight Test Purpose
Jaka Bostner & Luis Antonio Jacob da Motta – Lilium eAircraft GmbH
Even though typically a video recording provides little quantitative data, it helps significantly to obtain broader picture about the aircraft behavior. Specially, if a camera can be installed ad-hoc on the required position. GoPro cameras at hobby price level and low SWaP specifications offer excellent video quality and optical image stabilization feature. Their main drawback from the instrumentation perspective is lack of video timestamp of the GPS time in order to have synchronization with the main data acquisition system. To overcome this, we developed a procedure to stamp GPS time together with few basic aircraft parameters in the GoPro Image during the video post-processing. This solution enables quick implementation of a video camera on a remote location of the aircraft, sparing any additional harness installation and with the retained time synchronization function.
6235 – Data Driven Platform for Smarter Testing
Neil Loftus – Airbus UK Tony Goff – Dassault Systemes UK Cedric Laurent – Dynaworks (Airbus)
In a desire to make transportation increasingly autonomous, the need for a robust and precise positioning system is essential. Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) is typically the technology of choice to provide positioning, velocity and timing (PVT) information. Standard GNSS receivers are based on scalar tracking loops (STL) in order to track the signal of each satellite in view independently. Although, in harsh environments, such as urban canyons, the GNSS signals are strongly degraded by multipaths, signal attenuation and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) phenomena which highly impacts the stability of the tracking loops and thus affects the robustness and the precision of the PVT solution. Other GNSS receiver architectures are proposed within the literature which overcome some of the weakness of a STL architecture. They are based on vector tracking loops (VTL) where each tracking loops is intimately related with the others through an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Moreover, enhancing the VTL with inertial measurement unit (IMU) information through an inertial navigation system (INS), in an ultra-tightly coupled manner, allows to account for local receiver dynamics. Thereby it is possible to narrow down the bandwidth of phase lock loop (PLL) thus improving the resilience to noise and the stability of the tracking loops. Works on vector delay and frequency lock loops (VDFLL) architectures show good results in specific environments but the real-time hardware implementation remains complex and data synchronization and calculation time management between the EKF and the tracking loops is not trivial to handle.
In this contribution, an alternative approach is proposed for a GNSS/INS ultra-tight coupling which is based on the VTL architecture but in which the PLL bandwidth is adapted according to inertial navigation system (INS) information. This approach uses the calculated pseudoranges and Doppler frequencies from the receiver hardware which are tightly coupled with the output of an INS in order to provide an estimated position, velocity and time (PVT) solution using an extended Kalman filter (EKF). The solution is then used to calculate Doppler frequency rates which are fed back to the loop filter of every channel at the same time, in order to adapt the phase lock loop (PLL) bandwidth. The proposed architecture has the advantage to be easily implementable on a System-on-Chip (SoC) component such as an FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays), with minor modifications on an existing GNSS receiver platform. Moreover, compared to classical vector-based solutions, it has two main implementation advantages: 1) data synchronization and timing issues are easily handled; 2) the navigation message is decoded in the loop, without the need to run scalar loops in parallel or having to store pre-downloaded ephemeris data, limiting therefore the area occupied on the FPGA and the use of additional resources for storage.
The proposed GNSS receiver architecture uses GPS L1/C and Galileo E1 signals and is composed of one acquisition module and 16 tracking channels (8 GPS and 8 Galileo) which are implemented within a FPGA (Zynq-Ultrascale). The EKF module is implemented on the ARM of the Zynq. The approach is tested with synthetic and real-world data, where different signal degradations occur. The ultra-tight hybrid STL/VTL architecture’s real-time implementation is analyzed and compared to a reference software defined receiver designed with Matlab. A detailed description of the the GNSS receiver hardware is given.
4953 – TESTING OF THE NEW ADVANCED AVIONICS PLATFORM SOFTWARE FOR THE GRIPEN E FIGHTER
Maxime DAUDIER – SAAB
It’s hard to imagine that the smartphone in your pocket has anything in common with Gripen E, one of the most modern fighters in aviation history. But they have more similarities between them than meets the eye. Both rely on technology that can be upgraded and updated without the need for costly replacement, to ensure continual performance at optimal levels. And both have been developed with built-in flexibility, allowing the original product to evolve and to be customised to meet the changing needs of the user.
The same way that you download apps for your smartphone that fit your individual preferences, with Gripen, software adaptations can be made to address new and evolving types of threats.
The ability to customise the functionality of the fighter to address future needs is due to the adaptability of the advanced Avionics Platform Software (APS) architecture that is embedded in Gripen E software. This new avionics architecture is based on a Distributed Integrated Modular Avionics (DIMA) system, where flight critical functions are separated from tactical features. This in turn leads to a fast loop of iterative tactical upgrades with no effect on the basic aircraft nor its system- or flight safety.
This is a real technology leap, tactical functions can be upgraded without having to retest safety critical functions.
Since most of the complexity of the core avionics software resides in the avionics platform, the challenge for the Flight Test department was to find a reliable regression test suite of the APS meant to mainly ensure that the basic properties for scheduling and data communication are met and to test the robustness of the avionics platform in many aspects. The testing has to include also stress tests of the separation between the flight critical functions and the tactical system.
This paper describes the test suite built at aircraft level by the Flight Test department to achieve this and how the APS was live monitored during flight tests and then evaluated post-flight.
The results include successful flight testing of the new avionics platform software. The APS was monitored during many flights and reached the expected safety of flight. The test suite was then performed against many new software editions upgrading the Flight Critical functions, these editions were then monitored during flights and they all flew safely.
A lot of editions with only software impacts on tactical features were then allowed to fly without performing any test on APS and without performing any long Flight Safety Test Campaign in integration rigs and simulators. This gave shorter time between updated software deliveries and start of flight test, so the expected technology leap was reached. »
7835 – AITA. Automatic validation of parameters
Francisca Coll & Pedro Rubio – Airbus Defence and Space Spain
Most of the Test analyses are repetitive and therefore can be automated. The instrumentation of prototypes is becoming heavier and all parameters require validation. Most Test analyses tasks are manual, time consuming and prone to human errors.
AITA is an Airbus R&T project with the aim of developing a framework based on AI to automate most of these tasks and replace the obsolete tools currently in place.
This paper will describe the Machine Learning technique used for the validation of instrumentation parameters, which is part of the AITA project.
The need to validate automatically the instrumented parameters is clear, since thousands of Flight Test Instrumented parameters are not initially validated and they are not ready when required. Additionally, the automatic validation reduces workload and human errors. The technique used for the parameter validation is based on Decision Tree.
Decision trees are a type of machine learning model that is often used in classification problems. They work by dividing the dataset into smaller segments based on specific features, and then using that information to make predictions.
This paper explains the steps followed for the validation, the features selected to create the tree, the data set used to train the tree and finally, the decision tree prediction on flight instrumented parameters belonging to ADS aircraft fleet.
7691 – Anomaly detection: a first AI-based application for OASIS
Fanny Morel, Clémentine Barreyre, Anaïs Charcosset, Oihana Coustie, Jules-Edouard Denis, Linda Hammoud, Bruno Rouzier and Sébastien Zajac – Airbus Defence and Space SAS France
Airbus Defence and Space (ADS) has developed a big data platform named OASIS, which stands for Open Analytic ServIces for Space. Since June 2020, this big data platform is in charge of real-time telemetry ingestion, analytics and visualization for a wide and global ADS Satellite Fleet Supervision. It is used all along the satellite lifetime, from design and test to in-orbit support. The supervised fleet is now composed of 55 earth observation and telecommunication satellites and the platform aggregates 300Gb per day.
Every day, 600 active Airbus users take advantage of the capacities of the platform. In particular, in-orbit satellite operators are using OASIS twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for fleet supervision purposes. The OASIS capabilities to store, index, analyze data, alert in case of anomaly during in-flight phases are vital. In this context, Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions are of high interest, as they are key enablers for decision-making systems, helping the operators to automatize routine tasks and focus on potential critical events.
In particular, the present paper will focus on the AI-based anomaly detection algorithms that are designed, developed and tested on OASIS. Unsupervised multivariate and monovariate algorithms are studied. Their development follows a three steps strategy: data analytics techniques investigation, algorithm implementation on a subset of telemetry and involvement of satellite experts. The OASIS platform offers two strong advantages for the development of such data science applications: easy access to analytics tools and easy access to a huge amount of telemetry data. The designed anomaly detection algorithms are now deployed in production for specific earth observation satellite use-cases, efficiently ensuring a daily monitoring service. This is a first step towards industrialization of AI-based algorithms on a larger and less specific satellite fleet. »
8772 – Airbus Defence & Space Solution for TVAC tests data supervision : DynaThermaNeo\rThibaut Le Goffic & Rémi Lamandé & Yann Bouetard & Cédric Laurent – Airbus Defence and Space France
Space simulation in Thermal Vacuum Chambers is one of the major tests performed for Spacecraft qualification.
During these tests, huge amount (several thousands) of parameters need to be acquired for near real time real supervision or post-test analysis.
These parameters can come from :
– The test facility such as the command control data
– The instrumentation on test such as the thermocouples used for the qualification
– The Spacecraft telemetries which are running also during the test
– Other sources of data such as simulations, test rigs, gas analyser, …
To aggregate these data and be able to deliver them to the different stakeholders of the test (test operators, satellite architects and analysts, remote customers), Airbus Defence & Space developed DynaThermaNeo solution.
DynaThermaNeo ensures the test preparation, piloting interface and near real-time acquisition. DynaThermaNeo solution is based on DynaWorks software platform developed by Airbus Defence & Space and used in-house and by external customers in Aerospace and Defence industries.
The main objectives (and stakes) of the solution are :
– Improve process efficiency –> test cost reduction
– Develop flexible interfaces and configurations (open solution) –> adaptability and durability
– Develop an user friendly user interface –> training time reduction
– Be compliant with network constraints and test means
– Reliability on critical systems »
Test Data Acquisition Network & Recording
8760 – A generalist Usage and OLM SHMS data acquisition equipment for diverse aircraft.
Jose Antonio Gonzalez Pastrana & Natalia Esteve Ferrer & Jaime García Alonso – Airbus Spain
At Airbus Defence and Space, a general Usage and Operational Loads Monitoring (OLM) Structural Health Monitoring System (SHMS) has been developed over the past 20 years. This system has been designed in response to the specific needs of customers with different on-board data acquisition equipment. The premise has been to establish a common data acquisition equipment that can be adapted to various aircraft platforms, upgrading legacy data acquisition equipment. The data coming from this equipment is analysed using in-house developed software capable of providing Individual Aircraft Tracking in terms of analyses and reports related to Usage, Fatigue and Crack growth and the impact in Maintenance along the aircraft’s life cycle. The new and common data acquisition and storage hardware, which comes from the current Flight Test Instrumentation environment, has been adapted and certified to be used as LRUs (Line-Replaceable Units). This hardware can be tailored to customer requirements.
101 – The Light FTI System – the first truly light wireless system for Flight Test Instrumentation
Renaud Urli, David Cumer and Ligang Huang – Airbus Germany, France, China
Although wireless instrumentation systems are available for rotating applications, they do not satisfy the real cost, weight and cycles requirements of Flight Test organisations. On the other hand, low weight and low intrusiveness instrumentation equipment are available for industrial measurement e.g. in the frame of Industry 4.0, but those do not cover the measurement requirement for FTI applications, like bandwidth.
The Light FTI System is a common development of the Airbus Group: it is a highly innovative MEMS sensor network system based on BLE / UWB wireless technology, which is the first to tick all the boxes of the requirements of FT organisations regarding low weight, low cycle installation, low intrusiveness, high operational autonomy, high operational wireless range, and high bandwidth measurement. Its development has been led in a cooperative manner between the business units of the Airbus Group over several continents. This paper will present the technical challenges of the system as well as the organisational challenges of the development. It will describe the outstanding technical results of the first truly light FTI system, which the FTI community has always been dreaming of. »
238 – Miniature High-Accuracy Time Space Position Information (TSPI) Data Acquistion
Ben Kupferschmit – Curtiss Wright
Flight test applications require accurate and plentiful data to verify and validate the test article’s performance. This data is most useful when properly correlated with other contemporaneous test data. This includes ensuring that all data is in sync with the aircraft’s position and orientation in space. This enhances one’s knowledge of what is happening during different maneuvers, allowing engineers to determine the limits of an airborne platform better.
Time space position information (TSPI) systems deliver this positional data. TSPI systems can provide very accurate data by combining highly accurate and precise internal electromechanical components with careful installation and calibration. This paper discusses a new miniature TSPI device and presents real-world test data demonstrating its performance.
361- A challenging high-end data acquisition system in a harsh wind tunnel environment at high rotational speed
Michiel Bardet, Pim van Zutphen, Filip Fontaine, Johan de Goede and Peter Faasse – NLR
In the European research program Clean Sky 2 SA2FIR, an acronym for “Simulator of Aerodynamic and Acoustic Fan IntegRation”, a generic test rig for wind tunnel testing is being developed to investigate the behaviour of a turbofan propulsion simulator. During the wind tunnel testing the SA2FIR test rig will be subjected to widely varying environmental conditions, notably high temperatures and high rotational forces. Moreover, a huge number of sensors are connected, both in the rotating and non-rotating parts. These sensor signals must be acquired and conditioned for off-board processing and storage inside the severely limited available space in the test rig.
An integral part of the SA2FIR test rig is the Advanced Data Acquisition System (ADAS) which acquires all relevant sensor signals, and processes, visualizes and stores the resulting data. The system contains four data acquisition subsystems: i) Rotating Data Acquisition System (RDAS) including the telemetry system, which is located on the rotor, ii) Model Data Acquisition System (MDAS), which is located in the wind tunnel model nacelle and a simulated wing section, and of iii) the Inflow Data Acquisition System (IDAS) which is located outside the model, and iv) a low-sample rate pressure measurement system. All data is collected, processed and stored in the distributed Data Processing and Display System. Data is exchanged with a safety and health monitoring system.
The SA2FIR ADAS will initially be used in two wind tunnel test campaigns, i) in the ONERA S1MA wind tunnel in the Modane Avrieux Center, France and ii) in the DNW Large Low-Speed Facility (LLF) in Marknesse, the Netherlands. The modular design of the ADAS allows for adaptations to the configuration to suit the requirements of future test campaigns during the planned 25-year life of the test rig.
4379- INTEROPERABILITY STANDARDS FOR NETWORK BASED INSTRUMENTATION SYSTEMS
Mark Buckley – Telspan Phillip Ellebrock & Marshall Watts – Boeing St Louis Alfredo Berard – 96 RANSS/RNRE
The deployment of a standards-based networked airborne instrumentation on a new flight test program has led to a cost-efficient multi-vendor interoperable system with best-in-breed technologies. Airborne instrumentation systems have been deployed using vendor based proprietary network systems on a variety of DoD test programs which did not allow migration to better performing technologies. The development of standards-based network instrumentation systems has led to an opportunity for plug-n-play interoperability across airframes and organizations. This paper describes a standards-based, networked, multi-vendor instrumentation system on a new program that ruled out the use of a sole vendor proprietary instrumentation system.
7448 – Distributed Miniature Data Acquisition Units (DAU) to Support eVTOL Flight Testing
Kevin Gannuscio – DTS US
With the advancements of electric propulsion, electric vertical take-off, and landing vehicles (eVTOLs) are becoming a more viable solution for urban air mobility. While the technology is advancing quickly eVTOL companies must put their air crafts through vigorous flight testing to optimize performance and ensure all safety regulations are met. Flight test engineers face a variety of challenges instrumenting eVTOL aircrafts for in-flight testing. These flight tests are often complicated and require a significant amount of time to set-up instrumentation. Engineers are not only concerned with critical size, weight, and power (SWaP) considerations, but also reducing set up and test time and ability to support modification testing like such as adding sensor channels and altering test parameters. The ability to install a distributed miniature DAQ system throughout the air frame of an eVTOL aircraft is key to offering testing flexibility and reducing test set up time.
8978- TMoIP project AIRBUS HELICOPTERS MARIGNANE: digital architecture based on best in class SAFRAN DS product.
Marc Seznec & Laurent Carton – AIRBUS HELICOPTERS FRANCE
Telemetry ground station is obviously major installation for a flight Test center, first for the safety but also the validation, conduction of any flight test.
More, in the last years, some technological improvements were driven by digital world explosion (such as Ethernet), new generation of receptions hardware’s but also IRIG standard update, all aiming to ensure the consistency of tests and associated data transfer, to guarantee the interoperability of receiving sites and, not to forget, significant improvements in the quality and transmission of data.
TMoIP project for AH Marignane is based on all those improvements through a full review of its architecture for the ground station including consistency with overall AH network, the selection of last generation equipment from SAFRAN DATA SYSTEMS as “strategic vision” up to the creation of a 3rd receiving station using the synergies opportunity of AIRBUS OPERATION TLM site in Martigues.
This paper will details the solutions selected including the « centralized and optimized » management of the « Test range area » through some news SAFRAN DS bricks: ETHERNET Best Source Selector, development of dedicated MAESTRO monitoring tools and not to forget already delivered COMTRACKS antenna upgrade to the last ETH standard.
Finally 1st “RETEX” results in terms of coverage and quality are presented.
5375 – On-Board Processing: a decade of experience opening to new applications
Valentin Belaud, Ghislain Guerrero, Rémy Pelluault, Quentin Lecoq – Safran Data Systems France
Flight Test Instrumentation (FTI) system is now a network of interconnected devices that in real-time exchanges in a fast and synchronized way. The total data amount increased since the apparition of new sensors and fast avionic buses. It contributes to enhance flight-testing however the telemetry bandwidth remains a bottle neck. Optimizing the duration of test campaigns is a key driver of an aerospace development program.
There are several answers to address this situation and the one following the edge-computing trend would be to leverage the embedded processing power available in the Data Acquisition Units (DAU).
On-Board processing has immediate benefits: tailored filtering, data reduction, saving telemetry and recording bandwidth, on-board assessment for vehicle and pilot safety, command & control, mission sequencing, opportunity payload communication, quick prototyping module, video buffering and switching…
This paper outlines past and current campaign experiences using on-board processing features and extrapolate potential applications foreseeing in the future…..
3596 – Rotational Data Acquisition for Rotorcraft Wind Tunnel Models
Erik Brehl & Oliver Schneider – DLR Germany
The paper introduces a modular rotating DAQ system setup of a wind tunnel model for rotorcraft research. In wind tunnel testing the complexity regarding the model and instrumentation has significantly increased over the last years. A new developed downsized rotorcraft wind tunnel model has the requirement to acquire data in the rotational as well as in the fixed model part. Two separate DAQ systems are used for measuring. Each system is acquiring the data simultaneously up to 50 kS/s per channel. The rotating DAQ is using a microcontroller based real-time frontend in combination with a Linux based embedded system serving high-level-interfaces to complex hardware. For piloting and monitoring during wind tunnel testing an Ethernet data link is used through a contactless slip ring system or an alternative Wi-Fi (Dual-Band 802.11ac) connection. The safe model operation and scientific data analysis needs a low latency online data synchronization and merging from different measurement systems. A synchronization concept based on time stamping (NTP) and an analog 1/rev reference signal is described.