A Secure, Configurable, Wireless System for Transfer of Sensor Data from Aircraft to Ground

Abstract

Modern aircraft are complex systems, equipped with hundreds of embedded sensors that record a wide repertoire of data during flight, such as crucial engine and airframe parameters, status of flight control system, air conditioning system, landing gear, life-saving and emergency systems. The data from the sensors is stored in the Flight Data Recorder. Maintenance personnel routinely transfer this sensor data to a ground terminal device to analyze it for aircraft health and performance monitoring purposes. Manual methods of extracting sensor data can be tedious and error-prone when large fleets of aircraft are involved. This paper presents a novel system to extract sensor data from aircraft to a ground terminal, wirelessly. The wireless system is implemented using unique, configurable wireless transmitter receivers (WTRs) designed for this purpose. The hardware for the wireless transfer of data was designed, interfaced with a modern aircraft’s system, and tested with the aircraft on the ground and another flying object. The data from the aircraft’s Flight Data Recorder was successfully transmitted and received wirelessly by the ground terminal, over a distance of 50 meters (with aircraft on ground) and 10 Kilometers (with a flying object), in a secure mode with zero packet loss. The WTRs have also qualified the requisite tests for airborne certification.