An investigation into the next generation avionics architecture for the QUT UAV project

摘要

This paper investigates the next generation Unmanned Airborne Vehicle (UAV) Avionics Architecture for QUT’s unmanned research aircraft. Firstly, the generalised UAV avionics requirements for small to medium civilian UAVs are developed, taking into account areas including flight control, guidance, navigation, interoperability, sensing, data buses, communications data links, airspace integration, airworthiness and system safety. Significant consideration is also given to the extensive experience with past avionics architectures. An exploration is undertaken as to the current and predicted advances in technology, such as the use of embedded computational clusters and alternate computing architectures that would provide benefits to the next-generation avionics architecture if they were to be incorporated. This is put in context with a comparison against the existing avionics architecture as well as the avionics currently being developed for the QUT UAV project.ududThe results of this paper discuss the various options for avionics architectures with respect to the design requirements, and the experiences with their physical implementations. Conclusions are drawn which make recommendations on the optimal standardised architecture for UAV research at QUT.