Universal Decoder for Airborne Generated Data

The Navy currently uses a variety of aviation data collectors to record operational data that is analyzed to enable MFOQA, accident investigations, condition based maintenance, and other data analysis functions. Many of the data collector applications have closed file formats that change periodically and cannot be used without OEM equipment or assistance. These aviation file formats have common, discoverable, underlying characteristics which, when analyzed, can aid in the self-discovery of unknown formats. New research and development is required to create a software tool capable of exploiting these underlying characteristics to enable decoding these files without reliance on the OEM. We propose to continue the development of such a tool implementing Intelligent Data File Interpretation (IDFI), a software technology capable of identifying and decoding arbitrary binary files from aviation data collectors. Our IDFI technology focuses on the use of statistical analysis techniques to make inferences about the content of the file that would be difficult or impossible for a human to do alone. In addition, it combines other techniques (such as human-aided decoding) with the statistical analysis research in order to create a file format decoder that is robust against changes in file formats or the introduction of new formats.