Professional Documents
Culture Documents
SYNTHETIC VISION
www.avionicstoday.com
inside
May 2011 • Vol. 35, No. 5
magazine
www.avionicstoday.com
24 ■ E-Letters
• Review of top developments in the civil
and military aircraft electronics industry
Industry ■ Webinars
Wheels Up For SESAR................................... 18 www.aviationtoday.com/webinars
With 29 validation projects planned this year, the Single European Sky ATM Research • Global Partnerships in Avionics
program strives for tangible results to demonstrate progress toward Europe’s vision Development Engineering
by George Marsh • UAS Civil Airspace Integration: Progress and .
military Challenges
• Issues in Air Traffic Management
STARLite Vision............................................ 24 • Business Jet Connections: In-Flight
Northrop Grumman Small Tactical Radar-Lightweight (STARLite) systems provides coali- Connectivity Services and Solutions for
tion warfighters high-resolution imagery from unmanned aircraft systems and aerostats Business Aircraft
by Frank Colucci
• Airborne RFID: Radio Frequency
product focus Identification Takes Off
• ADS-B: Progress and Implementation
Synthetic Vision............................................ 28
Suppliers of synthetic vision systems, highly valued by pilots for safety and situational
awareness, strive for operational credits to use synthetic vision as a landing aid ■ Online Resources
by Ed McKenna • Aerospace Acronym Guide
also in this issue www.aviationtoday.com/av/acronym/a.html
• White Papers, Tech Reports
Editor’s Note www.aviationtoday.com/at/otherdocs/
UAS Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 • Aviation Today’s Job Board
Departments www.aviationtoday.com/aviationjobs/
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Calendar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Follow Avionics Magazine
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Cover: Pilot’s view through the Rockwell Collins Head-Up Guidance System with synthetic
vision. Photo courtesy Rockwell Collins.
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UAS Integration
W
ith FAA expected to issue a ment experts who spoke during the Avionics
proposed rule this summer that Magazine webinar, “UAS Civil Airspace
would govern operation of Integration: Progress and Challenges.” They
small unmanned aircraft sys- described progress on several fronts toward
tems (UAS) in the National Airspace System merging manned and unmanned air traffic.
(NAS), work is picking up on a number of Nevertheless, UAS flights in the United
fronts to open even wider access for UAS. States currently are limited to either restrict-
Pending budget approval, NASA this ed airspace, or in the NAS by obtaining a
year plans to embark on a five-year $157 certificate of authorization or waiver from
million UAS Integration in the NAS Project FAA, a costly and time-consuming process.
designed to reduce technical barriers and FAA in 2008 established an Aviation
validate concepts and technologies enabling Rulemaking Committee to recommend how
“routine” UAS operations in the airspace to proceed on regulating small UAS, where
system. The agency “will generate data for the greatest market growth is projected.
Work is FAA use in rulemaking through develop- Those recommendations, describing air
ment, testing and evaluation of UAS tech- vehicles weighing 55 pounds or less and fly-
picking up on nologies in operationally relevant scenarios,” ing no higher than 1,200 feet above ground
NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr., level, are the basis for the pending Notice of
a number of stated in testimony in March before the Sen- Proposed Rulemaking. Adoption of a final
fronts to open ate Transportation Committee. rule is anticipated in 2012 or 2013.
Industry developments continue to push Work continues on the technical barriers
wider access the envelope of unmanned flight. Northrop to UAS entry. Andrew Lacher, UAS Integra-
for unmanned Grumman has announced a series of recent
achievements, including, in February, the
tion Lead with MITRE Corp.’s Center for
Advanced Aviation System Development,
aircraft to the first flight of the tailless X-47B Unmanned said three key challenges are being addressed:
Combat Air System demonstrator; and in the integrity of the command and control
NAS. January, the flight of two unmanned aircraft communications link between the aircraft
in close proximity at high altitude to prepare and ground; maintaining safe separation of
for autonomous aerial refueling in 2012. UAS through “sense and avoid” technology;
There have been setbacks, too, as in the April and integrating UAS in the existing air-traffic
1 crash of AeroVironment’s hydrogen-pow- control system. “We see these three big chal-
ered Global Observer on its ninth test flight. lenge areas as being very complex, involving
UAS, or what the mainstream media likes significant technical, operational, procedural
to call “drones,” remain mostly a military phe- as well as policy components to their resolu-
nomena. But civil government and private- tion,” Lacher said.
sector interest in using them for missions John Appleby, program manager with the
such as border patrol, aerial photography Science and Technology Directorate of the
and firefighting has been building for years. Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
In its most recent aviation industry forecast, described a UAS modeling and simulation
released in February, FAA reports that 100 capability at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in
U.S. companies, academic institutions and Lexington, Mass., co-sponsored by DHS,
government organizations are developing FAA and the Department of Defense. Flight
300 UAS designs. The agency projects that testing using surrogate aircraft is planned in
10,000 small UAS will be operating in the next fiscal 2011 or 2012.
five years; in 10 years the fleet is projected to RTCA SC-203 plans to issue Minimum
increase to 25,000 units. Aviation System Performance Standards for
“We’re about building a new industry,” overall UAS systems in December 2012, fol-
said John S. Walker, co-chairman of RTCA lowed by both Sense-and-Avoid subsystem
Special Committee 203, Unmanned Aircraft and Control and Communication subsystem
Systems. “The technology is here and this is MASPS in December 2013, Walker said.
where the best and brightest of government
and industry need to come together to find
the tipping point where we go off and do
really great things.”
Walker was among industry and govern-
MANAGING EDITOR
Emily Feliz
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CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Frank Alexander, Frank Colucci, Ron Laurenzo,
George Marsh, Ed McKenna,
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With 29 validation projects planned this year, the Single European Sky
ATM Research (SESAR) program strives for timely, tangible results
I
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n Europe, the future shape of air- coin a phrase, SESAR is now airborne will, they say, become available to aviation
traffic management (ATM) is becom- and climbing. After a four-year Defini- stakeholders from now on and particu-
ing visible today. All over the extended tion phase during which a Master Plan larly during the program’s third and final
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temporal, financial and environmental phase commenced in 2009 and is well ceed the Development phase from 2016.
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approaches, 4D trajectories, datalink Officials of the SESAR Joint Under- logical and operational pillar of SESAR,
communications, precision navigation, taking (SJU), the public/private part- intended to carry out all further R&D
enhanced surveillance and other new pro- nership that is managing this second of activity required to field an ATM system
cedures and technologies. three phases, are clear that SESAR, one worthy of the 21st century. A collabora-
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A Quick Reaction Capability 1 Grey Eagle with Lynx 30 radar taxis before surveillance mission at Camp Taji north of Baghdad, Iraq
STARLite Vision
Small Tactical Radar-Lightweight (STARLite) gives warfighters high-
By Frank Colucci
M
“This is an interoperable radar,” Moving Target Indicator (DMTI) intro-
iniaturized Active explained Phil Owen, lead engineer for duced on the PTDS uncovers enemies on
Electronically-Scanned UAS payloads at the Army Aviation foot, and DMTI software will become
Array (AESA) radar gives and Missile Command (AMCOM) part of the baseline radar on the Grey
the U.S. Army a wide- at Redstone Arsenal, Ala. “It is using Eagle as well.
area, near-all-weather exclusively Open NATO standards. Any Every production Grey Eagle will
surveillance sensor for the Grey Eagle other exploiter out in the field can utilize carry the Northrop Grumman AN/
Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) and this data without special software. That ZPY-1 radar and Raytheon AN/AAS-53
the tethered aerostat Persistent Threat makes a huge difference in exploitation.” Common Sensor Payload. (Avionics,
Detection System (PTDS). The Ku-band radar works in strip August 2008, page 24.) The radar covers
The Northrop Grumman STARLite mode to image a large area along a pro- a wide area and cues the electro-optical
was to deploy to Afghanistan aboard the grammed path or in spot mode to take a sensor to identify or laser-designate tar-
PTDS in the first quarter of this year close look at specific targets. Actual per- gets with two clicks at the operator’s sta-
and will go to war on the Hellfire-armed formance numbers for the new sensor are tion. “It’s a very Open Architecture-type
Grey Eagle UAS in early 2012. Both undisclosed, but the Army credits STAR- of system, very warfighter-friendly,” said
platforms will downlink high-resolution Lite with greater than 40 kilometer range Joe Parsley, UAS and rotary wing systems
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery and better than 0.3 meter resolution. senior manager at Northrop Grumman
and Ground Moving Target Indication In addition, a GMTI mode is required Electronic Systems (NGES). “Without
(GMTI) data to United States joint- to track vehicles moving from about 10 to STARLite, you could be searching all
service and allied military forces. 70 km/h on a digital map. A Dismounted day, if you had good weather.”
The Ku-band STARLIte radar Strip mode paints a large area along a programmed path.
Company Effort
The 63-pound STARLite came from a
company-funded effort at NGES. The
Baltimore radar house had previously de-
veloped the 165-pound AN/ZPQ-1 Tacti-
cal Endurance Synthetic Aperture Radar
(TESAR). The single-channel TESAR
with electronically scanned receiver array
was the first UAS sensor with SAR and
GMTI functionality and deployed to
Bosnia in 1995 on the Air Force RQ-1A
Predator. STARLite has two channels to
provide greater GMTI accuracy, and it
benefits from later commercial-off-the-
shelf electronics.
“Certainly, it’s much lighter weight
and lower power, which allows it to be
Courtesy Northrop Grumman
The Persistent Threat Detection System is a tethered aerostat and sensor integration architecture used to disseminate threat data
to operational forces. With STARLite radar and Dismounted Target Indication, it will help counter insurgents planting IEDs.
to integrate with air vehicle systems. It “An engineer who’s used to lat-long might Grey Eagle SAR uses aircraft motion to
requires no Tactical Common Data Link not realize it.” image large areas. The PTDS is fixed by
changes and needs no more bandwidth The Army plans to field 13 Grey a 5,000-foot fiberoptic tether and uses
allocation than the current radar. PM Eagle-equipped companies, each with GMTI and DMTI to combat insurgents
RUS and Northrop Grumman also made 12 aircraft, mobile and portable ground placing improvised explosive devices.
a special effort to make the new radar control stations, and ground data termi- “We’re all about GMTI right now,”
readily compatible with the Army One nals. The service already has 37 mobile, noted Phil Owen at AMCOM.
System Ground Control Station and relocatable PTDS aerostats with multi- The baseline radar integrated into
other exploitation equipment. “I consider mission payloads integrated with the the PTDS and Grey Eagle is meanwhile
us kind of ground-station agnostic,” said Army command information architecture undergoing product improvements.
Parsley. “It doesn’t matter; as long as by Lockheed Martin Mission Systems & “We are in the process of qualifying the
there’s a Windows-based system, we can Sensors (MS2) in Owego, N.Y. Not all extended range antenna,” said Northrop
roll right into that system.” PTDS aerostats will have STARLite. Grumman’s Parsley. “It would almost
The Army and contractor worked to The two platforms emphasize dif- double the range in some cases.”
optimize the STARLite operator inter- ferent radar modes. At altitudes greater Northrop Grumman is independently
face. “We actually had the users involved than 25,000 feet and speeds to 150 knots, testing a littoral maritime capability for
with development of the ground STARLite on the company’s Twin
control application,” said STARLite Otter, based in the Baltimore area.
Lead Engineer Joe Deroba, with Though the Army cancelled its
the Communications-Electronics XM-157 Fire Scout unmanned
Research, Development and Engi- helicopter program, the Navy has
neering Center (CERDEC) at deployed the ship-launched MQ-8B
Courtesy Northrop Grumman
ANNOUNCING:
Powered by
Honeywell ‘SmartView’ Synthetic Vision System, offered on Gulfstream and Dassault jets, on approach to Scottsdale, Ariz., Airport.
Synthetic Vision
Suppliers of synthetic vision systems, valued by pilots for both safety and
situational awareness, strive for operational credits for the technology
By Ed McKenna bigger returns, seeing a place for SVS in ing a mental picture of what is happen-
T
the cockpits of at least some air-transport ing,” said Ben Kowalski, director of
he key argument for synthetic category aircraft. aviation OEM Sales with Garmin Inter-
vision systems (SVS) has always There is little argument about whether national. “Synthetic vision builds that
been safety. The technology, SVS can boost pilot performance, espe- mental picture,” and saves the pilot “an
which delivers real-time, color cially during IFR approaches. Regardless enormous amount of mental legwork,”
3-D imagery of the terrain out- of the weather or time of day, pilots can he said.
side the aircraft to the pilot, is broadly use SVS to see surrounding terrain and Gordon Pratt, vice president of busi-
praised for boosting pilot situational airports up to 40 miles away. ness development with Cobham Avion-
awareness, driving SVS sales for corpo- A big part of the pilot’s job is gather- ics, agreed. SVS technology reduces the
rate and general aviation aircraft and ing data “from the airspeed indicator, pilot’s workload and headaches by “mak-
helicopters. altimeter, course deviation indicator, ing every flight like VFR,” he said.
Some vendors now are eyeing even maps, charts, ground speed … and build- This capability alone is boosting sales,
Cobham Avionics IDU-680 large-format display in triple configuration with synthetic vision primary flight display, HITS navigation
ad index
Pg Advertiser Web Address
36 Ballard Technology.....................................................www.ballardtech.com
9 Carlisle Interconnect/ECS..............................................www.carlisleIT.com
21 Dayton-Granger.................................................... www.daytongranger.com
5 Honeywell.....................................................................www.honeywell.com
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Component Support
The Avianca-TACA group awarded Bar-
field, a Sabena Technics company based
in Miami, a 10-year support contract to
provide component support for its fleet
of 60 Airbus A320s.
The agreement includes the group’s
four airlines: Avianca, TACA, Aerogal
and Ocean Air.
In addition, Barfield is setting up repair
capabilities in Bogota, Colombia, to better
support Grupo Avianca-TACA’s airlines
Flight Display Systems, based in Alpharetta, Ga., introduced and installed an as well as operators in South America.
Android software application for use with its Select Cabin Management System Visit www.barfieldinc.com
(CMS). The application allows passengers to control all cabin functions from their
mobile phone or tablet computer. Distributor Agreement
The 7-inch Android-powered tablet controls cabin functions including lighting, Beaver Aerospace & Defense, of Livonia,
window shades, Blu-ray player, movie library and Moving Map. The wireless sys- Mich., appointed Satair, of Copenhagen,
tem operates via Bluetooth for full control anywhere inside the aircraft cabin. Demark, as a full-line distributor of
The launch customer for Flight Display Systems’ Android CMS software is an its FAA-approved commercial aircraft
unnamed operator of a Gulfstream III business jet. Visit www.FlightDisplay.com. products. Beaver Aerospace & Defense
manufactures actuation systems and com-
ponents for the aerospace and defense
PTFE Cable Klaus H. Eichel and supported by Man- industries.
W.L. Gore & Associates, of Landenberg, agers of Sales GA Europe Wolfgang Visit www.beaver-online.com.
Pa., introduced High Flex Flat Cables for Schwarzer and Sabine Eichel and Sup-
the aerospace industry using polytetra- port Engineer Achim Baier. Training System
fluoroethylene (PTFE) technology. Visit www.dacint.com. Baltic Aviation Academy in Vilnius,
Low coefficient of friction and “excel- Lithuania, will use computer-based pilot
lent” tear resistance enable the cables to Cold-Applied Splice training systems from CPaT, based in The
maintain good signal integrity, accord- Tyco Electronics, of Harrisburg, Pa., Woodlands, Texas.
ing to Gore. The flexible material also introduced a cold-applied splice, which The academy said it will introduce
allows the flat cables to be stacked on top provides both wire termination and CPaT’s library of Flight Training com-
of each other without needing dividers environmental sealing in a single step. puter-based training (CBT/WBT) course-
and shelves, reducing the overall size and Sealing is provided without the need ware and Specialty programs, and Learn-
weight of the cable system. for adhesives, tapes, grommets or other ing Management System (LMS), into its
Visit www.gore.com. methods traditionally used in aerospace training curriculums.
and defense applications. Because no CPaT’s LMS provides real-time access
Technical Publications heat is needed, the splice can be applied to learning analytics and reports in order
Avidyne Corp., based in Lincoln, Mass., in potentially hazardous places such as in to track the student’s learning process.
formed a partnership with Aircraft fueled aircraft, according to the company. Baltic Aviation Academy offers 34
Technical Publishers (ATP), of Brisbane The immersible splice prevents water training programs, including type rating
Calif., to provide single-source, digital, from entering even under permanent training courses for Boeing 737 Classic,
avionics technical publications of Avi- pressure or weight. The splice uses a non- Boeing 737 NG, Boeing 757, Boeing 767,
dyne products for ATP customers. flowing gel to provide sealing without Saab 340/2000, Airbus A320, ATR 42-72,
Visit www.avidyne.com. mess. The metal splice is tin-plated cop- Embraer 135/145, Bombardier CRJ
per with a transparent polyvinylidene 100/200 and Bombardier CRJ 700/900, as
European Office fluoride sleeve and color-coded thermo- well as initial pilot training school (FTO)
DAC International, of Austin, Texas, has plastic end caps. courses. Visit www.balticaa.com.
opened a European General Aviation Splices are available in three color-
office in Germany. coded sizes for 26 AWG to 12 AWG wire Voice, Data Services
The Germany office is managed by with silver or copper-plate conductors. Members of the oneworld airline alli-
ATM Automation
A
s traffic levels in civil aviation con- cation of Human Factors in many domains.
tinue to increase, the possibility of As a response to this, the European Com-
keeping up with capacity in Air Traf- mission funded the HILAS project (Human
fic Management (ATM) by simply Integration into the Lifecycle of Aviation
applying “more of the same” is faltering. The Systems) in which KTH was a partner. The
antidote, automation, is frequently cited as yet project ventured on a system-wide integration
another source of accidents. The Human Fac- in the aviation sector, from flight-deck tech-
tors Research group at KTH, the Royal Insti- nology through operations to maintenance.
tute of Technology in Stockholm, is one of One of the major achievements in the HILAS
the many actors that try to combat the draw- project was the inter-company sharing of
backs of badly implemented automation. potentially competitive information to obtain
Whereas earlier increases in air traffic industry-wide benefits.
could be mitigated by redesigning the ATM In order to overcome at least some of
sectors and increasing the number of air traf- the most cost inefficient causes, Europe has
Do developers fic controllers, this is no longer the case. Con- since the 1990’s taken steps toward a more
sequently, further work must be undertaken in harmonized ATM structure. The latest such
have the the area of automation in order to cope with step is the SESAR program, which is often
increases in traffic intensity. compared to the NextGen initiative in the
appropriate From the viewpoint of a human operator, U.S. Responding to emerging trends of higher
tools to automation can decrease the continuously automation and complexity, SESAR supports
developing understanding of system behavior, the Higher Automation Levels In ATM (www.
understand or Situation Awareness. This in turn can cre- hala-sesar.net) and Complex World (com-
the operational ate situations where automation together with
other system components, e.g. humans, per-
plexworld.innaxis.org) research networks, of
which KTH is taking an active part.
context of forms in a counter-productive manner. Does criticism of automation imply that
The Human Factors Engineering group at we should avoid automation altogether? No,
automated KTH has performed research in the area of of course we shouldn’t. But we should retain
systems? aviation during the past decades and currently an awareness of the potential consequences in
works on modeling large, highly automated order to make informed decisions. Automa-
systems in order to develop indicators for tion may to some extent remove humans from
safety assessment. The main rationale is to be the “sharp end” of operations, but the imple-
able to maintain the trend of increasing sys- mentation of automation tends to emphasize
tem integration while diminishing safety risks human intervention in the development phase.
and their associated costs, ultimately progress- That redistribution would arguably make a
ing sustainable aviation. rationale for increased research regarding the
Whereas small decoupled systems are effects of decision making in early stages of
fairly easy to model, large socio-technical sys- development. Do developers have appropriate
tems are very hard since the number of tightly tools to understand the operational context
coupled interactions between components of the automated system, especially in event-
in the system is large as well as being non- driven operations where some scenarios can
linear in their nature. This characteristic not only be assessed post-hoc?
only makes the systems hard to analyze but In the evolving highly automated ATM
the consequence of non-nominal operations system comprising a broader diversity of
tends to snowball and cause large costs. aircraft, broader diversity of equipage in avi-
The main driver of creating larger inte- onics and communications, broader diversity
grated systems is basically to gain economic of agents (human or autonomous), the main
advantage, but if larger systems create suf- question posed by the KTH Human Factors
ficiently large consequences, this argument Research group is how to model the impact of
becomes obsolete. Currently, we do not pos- automation in order to increase the safety and
sess sufficiently good tools and methodologies cost efficiency of aviation.
to assess large systems in near real-time in
order to prevent large break-downs. Attempts Fredrik Barchéus, MSc PhD, is a member
have been done to create incident reporting of the Human Factors Research group of KTH,
systems in order to elicit data, some of them the Royal Institute of Technology in Stock-
very good, but still there is a haphazard appli- holm. He can be reached at barcheus@kth.se
Join leaders and policy makers to explore the challenges to implementing NextGen, and see the
progress that is being made, fueled by an effective partnership between all the stakeholders.
The 2011 RTCA Annual Symposium features presentations and participation by FAA leaders
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18779
Replace multiple embedded I/O cards . . .
+ + + +
MIL-STD-1553 ARINC 429 ARINC 717 ARINC 708 DISCRETE
New Mx5
Avionics Interface Cards
for XMC & PMC