Development of a Portable WAAS Data Acquisition Tool for Fixed and Rotary Wing Data Gathering

Y-R.P. Huang, B. Douglas, J. Fagan

Abstract:	THIS paper presents the development of a portable data acquisition system for installation in performance Category A through Category D fixed and rotary wing aircraft. The research is conducted by FAA AFS-400 at Washington, D.C. and FAA AFS-450 at the Oklahoma City, University of Oklahoma, and Bell Helicopter in order to facilitate the development of standards and criteria essential to the implementation of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) especially for helicopter. The system does not require the aircraft to be placed in experimental test status when installed and collecting data measurements but may require an STC in some instances. The paper will detail the hardware design as well as the software functions of this portable data acquisition system as a tool for the first helicopter WAAS RNAV, VNAR, and Terminal En- Route Procedures (TERPS) designe. This Portable WAAS Data Acquisition Tool uses many state of the art technologies in order to gather information including but not limited to aircraft´s Time Position Space Information (TPSI), roll, pitch, horizontal and vertical deviations, X Y Z accelerations, and Cockpit Voice Recording as the FAA required. The information sources are generated from Garmin 430W or 530W avionics WAAS GPS receiver, solid state gyroscope integration, ARINC bus and cockpit voice channel. The solid state gyroscope integration or so called the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) is a single unit that requires ground speed information from ARINC bus to determine the three-dimensional orientation of a aircraft while flight. There is also an Analog to Digital Converters (ADC) integrated to the IMU for HIS´s horizontal and vertical deviations and flags. This Portable WAAS Data Acquisition Tool is designed totally for graphical user interface (GUI) and plug and play (PnP). The Portable WAAS Data Acquisition Tool satisfies the requirement to provide a large volume of flight information during the approach that had not been examined. Controller and pilot error in the critical phase of flight can be determined in order to implement new FAA procedures for the final approach to landing. This Portable WAAS Data Acquisition Tool has proved its functional integrity and has successfully produced TSPI data for the FAA at the University of Oklahoma Westheimer Airpark (KOUN) and Oklahoma City Will Rogers World Airport (KOKC). This Portable WAAS Data Acquisition System is also participated to establish the first WAAS helicopter approach procedure which is never be done before. The flight data provided by this portable WAAS data acquisition system will make the Bell 429 helicopter become the first certified helicopter which has capability to fly WAAS RNAV and VNAV procedures.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 23rd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2010) September 21 - 24, 2010 Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon Portland, OR
Pages:	3213 - 3219
Cite this article:	Huang, Y-R.P., Douglas, B., Fagan, J., "Development of a Portable WAAS Data Acquisition Tool for Fixed and Rotary Wing Data Gathering," Proceedings of the 23rd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2010), Portland, OR, September 2010, pp. 3213-3219.
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