A Data Acquisition System Featuring On-Board Processing

Abstract

A data acquisition system for the telemetry data on the Technology Development Vehicle (TDV) program is presented. To meet the major experimental objectives of the TDV mission - the collection of high frequency vibration and acoustic data on a re-entry vehicle - required some unusual design approaches. It is shown that collection of this data requires a great deal of data compression. This was accomplished using a technique of on-board data processing - actually performing the first step of data reduction in flight. The entire data acquisition system is described in light of the requirements imposed by the data with emphasis on unusual problems and solutions. Results of ground tests in an anechoic chamber are presented, and a brief discussion of the errors involved in onboard processing is given.