Flights to Files: Telemetry Ground Systems w/ Data Fusion Software
Flight test engineers often must provide preflight checkouts, support live flight testing, and postflight analysis
of the entire test campaign. A standard’s based common hardware and software platform from
Telspan Data makes these tasks easier and more reliable.
The 3rd generation DataHUB is a ground or airborne system with IRIG 106 Chapter 10 record, reproduce, publish, and subscribe capabilities. DataHUB models provide up to (32) bi-directional 50Mbps PCM channels, up to (3) Ethernet channels, (2) analog channels, (4) UART channels and (1) video channel.
One or more Channel groups (streams) are recorded to removable solid-state hard drives and/or published over Ethernet interfaces. The Ethernet interfaces can also be used to subscribe to other CH10 publishers or for recording the data externally.
A GPS receiver can seed the internal IRIG-A/B/G, NTP and IEEE-1588v2 time generators. Setup of the DataHUB is accomplished via browser-based web GUI, CLI and/or through Telspan’s NetView Data Fusion software.
A hallmark of Telspan products are their multi-disciplined capabilities. The DataHUB provides gateway functions with IRIG 106 Chapter 7 or HDLC encoding/decoding and Best Source Selection (BSS) in accordance with IRIG 106 Chapter 2 Data Quality Metric/Data Quality Encapsulation (DQM/DQE). With IRIG 106 Chapter 10 based publish/subscribe any/all incoming channels w/time can be transmitted over Ethernet networks and received for reproduce/record with another DataHUB.
The 1U DataHUB provides up to 8 bi-directional TTL PCM streams and removeable recording up to 32TB. The 2U DataHUB adds Signal Expansion Modules (SEM), the PCM SEM adds 16 or 24 (TTL & RS-422) bi-directional channels, future SEM’s will provide digital bit synchronizers, high-speed analog, avionics buses, and 1/10/25G optical Ethernet.
When portability is called for, the DataHUB Portable offers 4 (TTL & RS-422) bi-directional PCM channels and 1 Ethernet Channel. It is also offered with or without a CFast drive recording capability.
NetView Data Fusion & Display
Managing and visualizing pre, live and post flight data is easy with NetView Data Fusion & Display. NetView provides real-time decoding, processing, display, distribution & recording from multiple IRIG 106 Chapter 10 data sources (recorders, publishers, etc) and network-based instrumentation systems including the DataHUB. It decodes, time aligns, processes, and displays multiple independent data source types and formats in a single processing and display environment.
In preflight scenarios, engineers will appreciate NetView’s raw data displays which provide the ability to drive down to the bit level on all CH10 data types without any setup. NetView has full measurement and Math Engine processing from PCM, MIL-STD-1553, ARINC 429, Analog, and Ethernet
(TMATS S-Group Message/Sub-Message). The number of measurements and derives has proved so far limitless. NetView also provides IRIG 106 Chapter 7 decoder capability.
Both live and post flight scenarios will benefit from NetView’s real-time data display capabilities including video, high-speed imagery, 2D/3D flight, HUD, XY plots, line graphs, strip charts, bit discretes, and many more.
To play back previously recorded data, the user simply chooses one or more CH10 files, NetView will automatically time align the data, search for indexes & events and even auto-open displays (video for example) should they be part of the file. This playback can be published IAW CH10 to other NetView workstations for display and analysis or to CH10 subscribe/reproduce hardware like the DataHUB.
A complete Software Development Kit (SDK) extends NetView’s capabilities allowing the user to develop their own custom database importers, data decoders, measurement processing or GUI’s and displays.
Conclusion
While the DataHUB and NetView can be used independently one from the other, when combined users are presented with a powerful capability for pre, live and post flight data acquisition, distribution, processing and display no matter the operational environment.