New Proposal for Improvements in Communication and Power Systems for SHM Aircraft Networks

摘要

There are many communication and network systems that have been developedand implemented by the aeronautic manufacturers during the last decades tointerconnect the many and very different sensors included in the aircraft. In theStructural Health Monitoring (SHM) field, the quantity of SHM sensors to be installedinside an aircraft is of the order of hundreds or thousands, which complicates evenmore the complexity of the communication networks. The high consumption of all theSHM systems working at the same time and the complexity of the complete SHMnetwork are critical aspects, besides the size and weight of the wiring, the periodicityof the sampling of these sensors, the data rate or the real-time requirements. Previouswork of the authors presented an all-in-one fully integrated on-board electronic systemthat can perform in-situ SHM of aircraft’s structures based on guided wave ultrasonicmethod. The consumption of this equipment is of a few Watts, which is a criticalspecification that must be resolved if this system is to be boarded in the aircraft. Thegoal of the research presented in this paper is design a communication system that caninterconnect a huge number of SHM devices installed on-board an aircraft with a lowconsumption. The distribution of these devices has been organized in sub-networks inorder to reduce the instantaneous consumption. Multipoint communications and a newprotocol have been adopted. A prototype to test this network system has beendesigned, developed and subjected to laboratory tests.