Hybridization of wireless technologies for the aerospace instrumentation

Abstract

Whatever the flight test or space launch vehicle, instrumentation presents strong intrusiveness due to cabling. The industry is resolutely looking for a transition toward wireless architectures for elimination of cabling while not compromising data integrity and network performances. The ideal wireless solution is a single technology that could encompass all the needs. But there is a wide variety of use cases and associated requirements: data throughput, synchronization accuracy, power consumption, robustness of the link, frequency regulation constraints. Today, no technology is able to cover all these needs. However, multiple technologies show specific characteristics that are optimized for some particular use cases. Hybridization of multiple wireless technologies in a complex system is the right solution to address specific applications with the optimal wireless instrumentation solution and no concession on performance.