A 256 CHANNEL HIGH SPEED MODULAR FLIGHT COMPUTER FOR HYPERSONIC LAUNCH VEHICLES

Abstract

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.