AIRBORNE DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM FOR THE RAH-66 COMANCHE AIRCRAFT

Abstract

The RAH-66 Comanche flight test program required a state of the art Airborne Data Acquisition System consisting of: 1) A modular distributed system that uses a series of software programmable building blocks capable of signal conditioning all types of sensors. 2) A digital multiplexing system capable of combining various types of digital streams at high rates including Synchronous and Asynchronous PCM, MIL-STD-1553B, and RS-422 data streams. 3) A Data Combiner Unit that accepts synchronous PCM data streams from one to eight sources at 4 MBPS or less and a frame size of up to 8128 words each that outputs four independent PCM streams at 8 MBPS or less and a frame size of up to 16384 words. 4) A Data System Control Unit that controls the tape recorder, serves as the interface to the Pilot’s Control Unit and monitors/reports status of the data acquisition system to the Pilots Control Unit. 5) An Airborne Computer that provides the control and interface to the pilot & copilot instrumentation displays. 6) A Cockpit Instrumentation Pilot Display System consisting of a Main Unit Multi- Function Display, a Load Factor/Hub Moment Display and a Right Wing Flight Control Position Display. The Main Unit Multi-Function Display has the capability to display multiple graphic pages generated by the Airborne Computer. 7) The ability to record high speed avionics buses from the (Mission Equipment Package) MEP such as MIL-STD-1553B, (High Speed Data Bus) HSDB, (Processor Interconnect) PI Bus, (Data Flow Network) DFN and PCM utilizing the Ampex DCRsi-107 Tape Recorder.