Environmental Assessments and Mitigation of Naval Operations (Air and Surface)

Modern wireless systems such as cellular are practical due to the integration of radio, processing, and semiconductor technologies, and as production volumes have grown, component prices have dropped. Reduced costs and well-developed design methods maynow combine to provide software controlled and highly cost effective wireless monitoring. The development and production costs for this equipment are easily offset by reduced maintenance cost and staffing allowed to users of the system. For militaryaircraft maintenance applications equally important issues are improvements in mission effectiveness and capability that result from reduced down time, higher reliability and sortie generation rates, and improved safety. Use of the commercial Industrial,Scientific, and Medical bands for this system design allow commercial reuse, and thus provides lower cost and greater availability to military users. The system will be designed with a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ)for high spectral efficiency and reliability. The MicroRadio and data acquisition technology base of Cleveland Medical Devices provides an ideal starting point for this program.Greater military aircraft mission effectiveness, crew safety, and simplifiedmaintenance are the chief benefits of this program to the military. However, the methods developed here will be immediately applicable to civilian aircraft maintenance, particularly airliners and corporate aircraft, and also to myriad other civilianmonitoring applications. Virtually any complex equipment for which expensive regular maintenance is required could benefit from this new technology. Health monitoring of humans and animals may prove to be an even larger market than industrial andmilitary data acquisition.