THE ARCHITECTURE OF AIRCRAFT INSTRUMENTATION NETWORKS

Abstract

The development of network-based data acquisition systems has resulted in a new architecture for supporting flight instrumentation that has the potential to revolutionize the way we test our aircraft. Unlike conventional flight test instrumentation, networks provide for a two-way communication path between all elements of the system, utilize packetized data, support communication protocols, have dynamic quality of service levels, can be subject to loss of data, utilize asynchronous transmission behavior and provide an even higher level of time synchronization. Different flight test architectures can be realized which combine each of the previous attributes in different ways; finding the best architecture for a set of given applications while minimizing cost and complexity is a very difficult problem. For the last 3 years, the Network Products Division at Teletronics has been involved in the design and evaluation of aircraft instrumentation networks for both customers and the iNET program. This paper describes the result of these efforts by discussing the high-level design of a modular architecture for an aircraft instrumentation network.