INTRODUCTION TO AVIONICS

AVIONICS

Avionics is the word derived from the combination of aviation and electronics. The term avionics or avionic sub
system is used in the aircraft which is dependent on electronics for its operation, although the system may contain
electro-mechanical elements.eg: Fly by wire system.

The electro-mechanical system although they may have associated electronics

 The pilot control stick assembly , rate gyros and accelerometers to measure aircraft motion
 Airdata sensors to measure aircraft height, airspeed and airstream incidence
 Electro- hydraulic actuators to control the angular positions of the control surfaces.

In case of military or civil aircraft avionics equipment cost around 30% of the total cost of aircraft.

40% of cost of aircraft in case of maritime patrol/ anti- submarine aircraft helicopter

75% of total cost in case of airborne early warning aircraft –AWACS

The avionics systems are essential to enable the flight crew to carry out the aircraft mission safely and efficiently.

2. NEED FOR AVIONICS IN CIVIL AND MILITARY AIRCRAFTS

2.1 Civil Aircraft

 In the case of civil aircraft, the mission is the carrying of the passengers to their destination.
 The need for avionics in civil aircraft is to meet the mission requirements with the minimum of flight crew.
 This is made possible by reducing the crew workload by automating the task, which is used to be carried out
by the navigator and flight engineer.
 Reduction of weight is very important because that can be translated into more passengers or longer range on
less fuel.

2.2 Military Aircraft

 In case of military aircraft, the mission is to

 Intercepting a hostile aircraft
 Attacking a ground target
 Reconnaissance
 Maritime Patrol
 In military aircraft single seat fighter is lighter and costs less than equivalent to 2 seat version.
 The elimination of second crew member has also significant economic benefits in terms of reduction in
training costs

3. DESIGN AND REQUIREMENTS

 Every digital avionics system performs operation based on system performance requirement.

 Requirements are based on mission.

 Host aircraft and the mission are the inputs to the definition of avionics system requirements.

 Designer analyze and decompose the inputs to develop accurate understanding of impact on digital avionics
system design requirements including the overall architecture and allocation of functions among major system
elements.

 Designer use computer based tools to automate much of this task.

  The aircraft and its mission drive the avionics system design.

 The starting point for designing a digital avionics system is a clear understanding of mission requirements and
requirements levied by host aircraft.

3.1MILITARY AIRCRAFT

 The customer (Department, ministry or defence) prepares a statement of need and top level description of the
possible mission (eg: air to air, reconnaissance, bombing).
 This describes the gross characteristics of hypothetical aircraft that could fly mission and then seek vendors
willing to build such an aircraft.
 The military customer may also describe mission environment (eg: day or night, all weather and forward
battle area).
 The customer must also define strategic and tactical philosophies and principles and rules of engagement.
 In 1987, the US air force completed definition of generic avionics architecture for hypothetical high
performance aircraft. This architecture is known as “Pave pillar”
 Some of its example requirements are given below:
 Two level maintanence
 Sortie rate ≥ 4.5/ day(armed attack)
 Abot rate ≤ 1%
 Combat turn around time ≤ 15 min
 Non mission capable ( for avionics) ≤ 1.2%
 Mean time between critical failure (MTBF)- 70 hours
 Mean time to repair(critical functions) – 1.25 hours
 Fault detection: 99% of all possible faults
 Fault Isolation : 98% of all possible faults.

3.2 CIVIL AIRCRAFT

 There is vastly different approach to define aircraft and its mission.

 The aircraft manufacturer makes a very careful analysis of potential customer’s route structure, image and
operating philosophies to determine customer’s needs and postulates a future operating environment
especially air traffic management and relevant economic trends.
 The manufacturer then designs aircraft that provides balanced, optimum response to integrated set of needs.
 Safety is always the highest possible need and economical operation is second.
MISSION

MISSION SEGMENT

Air superiority
Ground support
SEGEMNT
Passanger transport Taxi
REQUIREMENTS
Take off
Cruise
AVIONICS
Descent
REQUIREMENT
Landing
Roll rate
Navigation precision Heading acceleration
Mach hold Weight
TRACEABLE REQUIREMENTS Reliability
 Decomposition of aircraft mission to establish avionic system

The process begins by making a top down requirement analyses to the aircraft mission.
If aircraft is required for several missions, the most demandable mission is selected as baseline mission and all
other are incremented from baseline.
The baseline mission is divided into segments and each segment is subjected to detailed analysis to establish
requirements for avionic system.
Standard mission segments- taxi, take off, climb, cruise, descent, landing, rollout for both civil and military
aircraft.
For both civil and military aircraft diversion to an alternate airport is likely mission segment.
For military aircraft there are possible mission phases such as low level penetration, air to air combat, air to
ground attack and reconnaissance.
Each mission segment is examined at the lowest reasonable level to establish the avionics system performance
requirements.
Typical cruise phase requirements include Altitude, Attitude, Mach hold,Gust alleviation
Crew(passanger) comfort,Navigation.
Typical military missions- avionics system requirement
oTarget range
oRange rate
oAzimuth
The time the aircraft spends in a given mission segment must be accurately stated since it has a strong influence
on avionic system design.
For example the relativity brief time spent in final approach and landing segment means only a short operating
time for automatic landing systems.
This brief time becomes major factor in computing probability of failure of automatic landing system.
The amount of time spent in air-to-air combat segment for high performance aircraft is generally very short and
will have impact on predicted probability of failure for equipment used only in that segment.

4. MAJOR ‘ILLITIES’ IN AVIONICS SYSTEMS

• Capability
• Reliability
• Maintainability
• Certificability
• Survivability(military)
• Availability
• Susceptibility
• vulnerability
• Life cycle cost(military) or cost of ownership(civil)
• Technical risk
• Weight & power

• Capability:
It is the task of designer to maximize the capability of the system within the constraints that are imposed.
• Reliability:
– Avionics equipment cannot be repaired in flight, so equipment failure mean aboting the mission.
– Designer strives to make systems as reliable as possible because high reliability leads to less
maintenance costs.
– If less reliable customer will not buy it and in terms of civil airlines the certificating agencies will not
certify it.
• Maintainability:
– Closely related to reliability
 – System must need preventive or corrective maintenance.
– System can be maintained through built in testing, automated troubleshooting and easy access to
hardware.
– Designer may consider trade off between accessibility and reliability.
– If an equipment is reliable it can be placed in inaccessible area.
• Availability:
– Combination of reliability and maintainability
– Trade off between reliability and maintainability to optimize availability.
– Availability translates into sorties for military aircraft and into revenue flights for civil aircrafts.
• Certificability:
– Major area of concern for avionics in civil airlines.
– Certification conducted by the regulatory agencies based on detailed, expert examination of all facets of
aircraft design and operation.
– The avionics architecture should be straight forward and easily understandable.
– There should be no sneak circuits and no no obvious modes of operation.
– Avionics certification focus on three analyses: preliminary hazard, fault tree, and FMEA.
 Survivalibity
– It is defined as function of susceptibility and vulnerability.
– Susceptibility is a measure of probability that an aircraft will be hit by a given threat.
– Vulnerability is a measure of probability that damage will occur if there is a hit by threat.
 Life cycle cost
– Life cycle cost is used for military applications and cost of ownership is used for civil application are
the principle economic measures for evaluating avionics architecture.
– Life cycle cost includes all hardware and software design, development test, production, installation
and maintanence.
• Risk:
– There is a natural tendency by every designer to demonstrate technical proves by including latest
tendency in the system.
– While the latest technology usually offers enhanced performance, the downside is increased risk, that the
technology may be difficult to manufacture.
– Amount of failures and drawbacks in the design and implementation.
– Over come by using the latest technology and fail proof technique to overcome both developmental and
long term technological risks.
• Weight and power:
– Minimize the weight and power requirements are two fundamental concepts of avionics design.
– So the design must be light weight and power consuming which is possible through the data bus and
latest advancement of electronics devices.

5. INTEGRATED AVIONICS AND WEAPON SYSTEM

 Avionic system generally comprises a number of smaller sub-systems which are combined to form a overall
system.
 The combination, interconnection and control of individual sub-system so that overall system can carry out
task effectively is called “System Integration”
Eg: Coupling bomb sight to the autopilot
 The aircraft, weapons and avionics system required by the crew to carry out the mission effectively must thus
be integrated.
 The aircraft must be able to operate from aircraft carrier in all weather, find target, attack it with suitable
weapon, with high probability of success.
 To minimize the probability of detection and altering the enemy’s defences, the aircraft needs to approach
target at high Sub-sonic speeds (500 – 600 knots), at very low level of height of 100 ft above sea level to stay
below radar horizon of target as long as possible.
 Knot = 1 nautical mile/hour; 1 nautical mile = 1.852 KM
The avionic equipment fit comprises of
 RADAR – target acquisition in all weather condition
 Doppler – accurate velocity sensor for Dead Reckoning navigation
 AHRS (Air data Heading Reference System)
- It consists of sensors on 3 axes that provide heading, attitude and yaw information for aircraft
- Altitude and heading information for pilot and displays, navigation computer, weapon aiming
computer, autopilot

- Air Data Computer

- Height,calibrated airspeed,true airspeed mach number info for pilot display,weapon aiming, DR
navigation, autopilot
- Radio Altmeter
- (measures attitude above terrain beneath a/c or spacecraft)
- Provides distance between plane and ground directly)
- Very low level flight profile during attack phase and all weather operation
- Navigation Computer
- Essential for mission
- Autopilot
- Reduce workload of pilot
- Weapon aiming Computer
- Essential for mission
- HUD
- Advantage of HUD and weapon aiming for low level attack
- Stores Management System
- Control and release of weapons

- Electronic Welfare System

- Radar warning receives ,radar jamming equipment essential for survivability in hostile environment
 Identification System(IFF)
- Essential to avoid attack by friendly forces
 Radio Navigation aids
- Location of parent ship on return from mission
 Communication radio suite
- Essential for communicating to parent ship and co-operating a/c
- A significant integration was required between another sub-system
(eg) weapon arriving System requires integration of HUD weapon aiming Computer
AHRS
Air Data Computer
Radar System
6.AVIONICS SUBSYSTEM

Avionics Subsystem:

The main avionic subsystem has been grouped into five layers according to their role and functions. This comprise of
displays, communication, data entry control and flight control system.

6.1 DISPLAYS

 The display system provide the visual interface between the pilot and the aircraft systems and comprise of
head up displays (HUDs), helmet mounted displays (HMDs) and head down displays (HDDs).
 The HUD now provides the primary display for presenting the essential flight information to the pilot and in
military aircraft has transformed weapon aiming accuracy.
 The HUD can also display a forward looking infrared(FLIR) video picture one to one with the outside world
from a fixed FLIR imaging sensor installed in the aircraft.
  Advantage of HUD is that it project the display information information into pilot’s field of view, so that the
pilot can concentrate on outside world.
 In HMD or HUD on helmet the information can be presented to pilot when looking under any direction.
 NVG( Night viewing googles) also be integrated onto the HMD, which provides complementary right vision
capability enabling the aircraft to operate at night or poor visibility .
 Multifunction colour display provides primary primary flight displays (PFD) of height, airspeed, mach
number, vertical speed, artificial horizon, pitch angle, bank angle, heading, velocity vector.
 They provide the navigation displays, or horizontal situation indicator (HSI) displays, which show the aircraft
position and track relative to the destination or waypoints together with the navigation information and
distance and time to go.

6.2 COMMUNICATION

 The two way communication between the ground bases and the aircraft or between aircraft is self evident
and is essential for Air traffic control(ATC).
 In civil aircraft, near to medium range communication is provided by VHF radio operating in the band of
30-100 MHz.
 In military aircraft, communication is provided by UHF radio operating in the band of 250-400 MHz.
 SATCOM systems are also being installed in many modern aircraft to provide world wide
communication.

6.3 DATA ENTRY AND CONTROL

 Data entry and control systems are essential for the crew to interact with the avionics systems.
 Such systems range from keyboards and touch panels to the use of direct voice input(DVI) control, exploiting
speech recognition technology and voice warning systems exploiting speech synthesizers.

6.4 FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM

Flight control system implements electric system in two areas, namely

 Auto stabilization system

 Fly by wire control system

(i)AUTOSTABILISATION SYSTEM

 Most swept wing jet aircraft exhibit a lightly damped short period oscillatory motion about the yaw and roll
axes at certain height and speed conditions.
 It requires at least a yaw auto- stabilizer system to damp and suppress this oscillatory motion. A roll
autostabilizer system may also be required.
 The short period motion about the pitch axis can be damped usig pitch auto stabilizer system.
 Most combat aircraft and many civil aircraft in fact requires three axis auto- stabilization systems to achieve
acceptable control and handling characteristics across the flight envelope.

(ii)FLY BY WIRE SYSTEM

 FBW flight contol provides continuous automatic stabilization of aircraft by computer control of control
surfaces from appropriates motion sensors.
 The system can be designed to give the pilot a manoeuvre command control which provides excellent control
and handling characteristics across the flight envelope.
 Carefree manoeuvring characteristics can also be achieved automatically limiting the pilots commands
according to aircraft state.

 6.5 AIRCRAFT STATE SENSOR SYTEMS

These comprises of (i) Air data systems

(ii) inertial sensor sytem

(i)AIR DATA SYSTEM

 it provides accurate information on the air data quantities such as

(i) Altitude
(ii) Calibrated speed
(iii) Vertical speed
(iv) True airspeed
(v) Mach number
(vi) Air stream incidence angle

The above quantities are essential for control and navigation of an aircraft.

 The air data computing system computes these quantities from the outputs of very accurate sensors which
measure the static pressure, total pressure and air temperature.
 The airstream incidence sensors is used to compute the air stream incidence angle.

(ii)INERTIAL SENSOR SYSTEM

 The aircraft attitude and direction in which it is heading are clearly essential information for the pilot in
executing a manoevure or flying in night.
 This system consists of set of gyros and accelerometers which measure the aircraft’s angular and linear
motion about the aircraft axes, together with a computing system which derives the aircraft attitude and
heading from the outputs of gyros and accelerometers.
 The use of very high accuracy gyros and accelerometers to measure the aircraft motion constitute an INS.
 INS provides very accurate attitude and heading information together with the aircraft velocity and position
data ( ground speed, track angle, latitude/ longitude co-ordinates).
6.6 .1. DEAD RECKONING SYSTEM

 DR navigation system derive the vehicle's present position by estimating the distance travelled from a known
position from a knowledge of the speed and directon of motion of the vehicle.
The main types of DR navigation systems used in aircraft are

(i) inertial navigation system- the most accurate and widely used systems.

(ii) doppler/heading reference systems- these are widely used in helicopters

(iii)air data/ heading reference system.

 A characteristic of all DR navigation systems is that the position error builds up with time and it is, therefore,
necessary to correct the DR position error and update the system from position fixes derived from a suitable
position fixing system.

6.6.2 RADIO NAVIGATION SYSTEM

 The aircraft position is derived using the suitable receiver with a supporting computer by receiving the signals
from ground based or satellite transmitters.
 GPS is used in the prime position fixing system, this is the satellite navigation system of outstanding accuracy.
 Other radio navigation aids such as VOR/DME and TACAN and which provides the range(R) and bearing of
aircraft from ground beacon transmitters located to provide coverage of the main air routes.
 ILS/MLS are used in the condition of poor visibility in airports.

6.8 TASK AUTOMATION SYSTEM

(ii)Autopilot and FMS

 Autopilot relieves the pilot of need to fly aircraft continuosly with the consequent tedium and fatigue and
enable pilot to concentrate on other tasks associated with mission.
 FMS tasks include
i. Flight planning
ii. Navigation management
iii. Engine control to maintain the planned speed or mach number
iv. Control of aircraft flight path to follow the optimized planned route
v. Control of vertical flight profile
vi. Ensuring the aircraft is at planned 3D position at the planned time slot, often referred to as 4D
navigation. This is very important for ATC
vii. Flight envelope monitoring
viii. Minimizing fuel consumption.

(iii)Engine control and management

 This task covers the control and efficient management and monitoring of engines.
 Electronic equipment involved in jet engine, forms an integral part of engine and essential for operation.
 Modern jet engine include Full authority digital engine control system(FADEC)
 This automatically controls flow of fuel to engine combustion chamber by fuel control unit so as to provide
closed loop control of engine thrust in response to the throttle command.
 The control system ensures the engine limits in terms of temperature, engine speed, acceleration.
 Acceleration are not exceeded and responds in a optimum manner to throttle command.
 High integrity failure survival control system is essential.
 Otherwise failure in system may affect6 and cause serious damage the engine and hazard the safety of aircraft.
 Other avionics system include engine health monitoring systems which measure process and record wide
range of parameters associated with performance and health of engine.
 Given warning of engine perform deterioration, excessive wear, high vibration level, excessive temperature
level.

(iv) House Keeping Management

 It is used to cover automation of background tasks essential for aircraft safe and efficient operation.
 Such tasks include
i. Fuel management
ii. Electrical power supply system management
iii. Hydraulic power supply system management
iv. Cabin/ Cockpit pressurization system
v. Environment control system
vi. Warning system
vii. Maintenance and monitoring systems.