ONLINE DISTRIBUTED VEHICLE AND MACHINERY HEALTH MANAGEMENT

Abstract

Modern aircraft and space vehicles routinely sense and record vast quantities of information relevant to assessing the vehicles’ health. However, limitations imposed by the bandwidth of telemetry and network connections prevent real-time transmission of the complete data set to central stations for analysis. An online health-management system suitable for bandwidth-limited network environments that enables interrogation of the full data set by ground-based operators is described. The system uses distributed objects organized in a data processing hierarchy linked by a buffered data-management subsystem. Reduced health information is routinely transmitted, but dynamic reports may be requested on demand from any object.