Avionics Wind Tunnel Concept

Wright Laboratory is developing the Avionics Wind Tunnel (AWT) to address current and future avionics system testing needs. Future testing will be characterized by the requirement to provide sensor inputs from many sources for the highly integrated avionics systems being developed. To achieve realistic inputs into the processing functions, there must be a common underlying representation of the environment in the testing resources. Latencies must be minimized and the threat models must have the correct level of fidelity. Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS is a networking technology that can address many unresolved issues in advanced avionics testing. DIS is a well accepted and highly promoted standard. DIS developers are focusing on solutions to interoperability issues, particularly terrain. This is extremely important for air-to-ground applications. Good latency for intra-laboratory applications with Ethernet has been observed, and use of SCRAMNet could provide even better performance. The "plug and play" capability of DIS has been well demonstrated. It is a powerful tool for the rapid construction of test scenarios. DIS models of high fidelity for laboratory applications exist off-the-shelf and many more are under development. Amherst Systems proposes to evaluate the ability of DIS to support research, development, and testing requirements of integrated avionics systems.