Investigate the Development of a Wireless Flight Test System

Abstract

This thesis describes the development and fight testing of a wireless flight test data acquisition system based on the IEEE 802.11 a/b/g protocols using low cost Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) equipment and software. The tested system consists of a video node, an Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS), an Access Point and a User Interface Node. The video node consists of an IP Camera which was used to demonstrate the viability of including video recording as a service in an aircraft. The Attitude Heading Reference System was integrated with a GPS and a serial device server. The User Interface Node was installed with moving map software which receives the data from the AHRS and GPS to display flight information including topographic maps, attitude, heading, and velocity and roll/pitch/yaw rates. It was also used to record data from the video node. The Access Point was used to configure the network in the "Infrastructure mode". The system was also tested in the "Ad-Hoc mode" i.e., without an Access Point and suggestions for improving the performance of a system in the Ad-Hoc mode were made. The Infrastructure mode was flight tested in a Cessna 172. The data logged from the wireless AHRS during the flight test shows that it performed at its rated specification and that no data was lost due to disconnection in the wireless system. The post flight test data processing shows that the wireless system provided a secure, interference free connection with a throughput of 1.102 Mbps. By comparison, the popular ARINC 429 data bus supports a data rate of 100 Kbps. The developed system demonstrates the applicability of wireless networking using the IEEE 802.11 protocols for application in flight testing and based on this, future work like extending the system to include more number of clients is presented.