Introducing RTAG, the Remote TAP & Aggregation Gateway
Recording of high-speed data sources takes on many forms at Telspan Data. The Modular Instrumentation TAP Recorder, aka MITR, is the “all in one” box Instrumentation Engineers have come to rely on. MITR provides high-speed processing, a massive storage capacity plus the ability to “tap” fiber optic and copper data busses for recording, UDP broadcast and PCM encoding.
However, there can be installation challenges when the TAP’s of interest outnumber the available inputs or even with simply routing/installing the TAP’s to a centrally installed MITR (typical of large/complex Flight Test Instrumentation (FTI) systems). The newly designed RTAG provides the ability to TAP/Transmit close to those points of interest and offers significantly more flexibility in the test topology architecture. RTAG greatly simplifies the interconnection of data sources like distributed LRUs, displays and/or external stores to the primary data recorder.
The RTAG is a multi-purposed TAP & Aggregator. Its ruggedized form factor is well suited for installation locations remote of the primary data recorder.
As an extension of the MITR, RTAG shares most of the design, logic and firmware with the MITR’s TAP & Interface Module (TIM). The RTAG provides multiple TAPs for optical & copper links in many formats (Ethernet, Fibre Channel, ARINC 818 & IEEE-1394/AS5643) and is available in several configurations: A 1G Optical (Ethernet & Fibre Channel) with 8 channels of Tx/Rx TAP’s & 8 channels Tx outputs, a mixed 1G Copper & 1G Optical (Fibre Channel) with 4 channels Tx/Rx TAP’s & 4 channels Tx outputs and a 10G Optical (Ethernet) with 8 channels Tx/Rx TAP’s & 8 channel Tx outputs.
RTAG can increase the number of data streams per transmit channel with programmable aggregation. The receive side of each TAP’s can either be passed-thru one-to-one to the transmit outputs, can be aggregated from multiple TAP’s to one or more transmit outputs (as programmed by the user) or filtered before the transmit outputs and PCM encoding. The figures below detail the RTAG in “breakout/monitor” and “aggregation” modes.
Telspan’ s hallmark “Multi-Disciplined” architecture extends to RTAG with the unit’s ability to provide data filtering and PCM encoding to IRIG 106 Chapter 4/7 or ISO/IEC 13239 High-Level Data Link Control (HDLC) formats.
By adding complementary capabilities across the product line Telspan Data continues to pave the way for the “multi-disciplined architecture” by not limiting every box to a single purpose. RTAG provides the flight-test engineer the ability to maximize use of limited high-speed recording channels, provide remote filtering/PCM encoding for telemetry and minimizes instrumentation cable runs from full-duplex Rx/Tx TAP’s to single Tx outputs to recording resources.