Cellular Telemetry of Flight Test Data

This is a proposal to perform a systematic study to gain the knowledge and understanding of the means necessary and the feasibility of such means to implement a real-time flight test data acquisiiton, display and analysis capability that utilizes low-cost,commercial cellular and satellite telephone technology. The study concentrates on defining new compression and encryption algorithms that take into account the nature of flight test data. These algorithms are necessary to achieve effective loss-lesstransmission of classified flight test data over low bandwidth cellular and satellite tether less networks. The study will survey different types of tether less communication networks and assess their suitability to flight test data transmissions also. Itis anticipated that the use of tether less networks, such as cellular and satellite, will increase the geographical area in which flight tests can be performed. Usage of such networks removes the current flight constraints of line-of-site testing betweenground station and aircraft. It further allows flight tests to be performed more often in that tests do not have to be scheduled in series due to limited radio frequency spectrum currently allocated to the flight test community. The use of cellular andsatellite networks for flight test data transmission has applications in the commercial aircraft industry also.