AN IMPROVED PROCESS IN THE FIELD OF FLIGHT TEST INSTRUMENTATION (FTI) FOR POST-PROCESSED GPS DATA ACQUISITION

摘要

The improved process results in synchronized acquisition of GPS and other FTI data. One of the important data for any flight test program is GPS data. The GPS time is very useful in proper synchronization of various data. The parameters such as position co- ordinates (latitude and longitude), altitude, track angle, ground speed etc. can be used for validation of aircraft navigation equipments. The same data can be used for validating the performance parameters of an aircraft. For example: Altitude parameter can be used to ascertain highly accurate measurement of climb performance, Position co-ordinates can be used for Range determination etc. With this in mind it was decided to improve the process by acquiring and recording the GPS data along with other FTI data. A schematic was prepared to acquire and record the data using a DAU and a SSR respectively using already available modules that suited the data output from the GPS receiver. The necessary cables were fabricated for the same. The data was successfully acquired and recorded. The next step was to post process the recorded data. It was found that the recorded data required further processing to get it into the format required by the post-processing software. Conversion software was written to make the SSR file suitable for the post processing software. The converted file was successfully processed and found to be exactly same as the earlier process.