Introduction Black box basics Types of data recorded Review of literature Planes network options Distributed flight data

data transmission Plane, ground and main servers Conclusion and future work

Air France Flight 447 crashed in 2009 into Atlantic ocean. Black box was found two years later at a cost of $40 million. Cause of crash is yet unknown

Air Blue Flight 202 crashed in 2010 into Margalla Hills near Islamabad. Black box was found in 3 days but its decoding took several months

This work investigates the feasibility of transmission, retrieval and analysis of flight data in real-time when the flight is in progress A distributed data transmission scheme is developed and a protocol is defined for reliable and efficient transmission of flight data The work is protected under US provisional patent

FDR (Flight Data Recorder) records technical state of the aircraft and sensor measurement data Third generation FDR (SSFDR) can record 256 parameters for up to 25 hours In addition CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) can record up to 2 hours of audio

It is designed to survive extreme force of crash and placed in the tail FDR and CVR are equipped with ULB (Underwater Locator Beacon) which is activated when the recorder is immersed in water.

ULB transmits an acoustical signal of 37.5 KHz that can be detected with a special receiver. In USA, NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) analyzes the black box data on plane crash and makes safety recommendations to FAA

CVR records all audio in the aircraft such as cockpit crews conversation with flight attendants, air traffic control and maintenance crew CAM (Cockpit Area Microphone) provides landing gear retraction noise, engine noise and general conversation in the cockpit When to hit the ERASE button?

In FDR, broad categories of data recorded are as follows:

Flight situation including heading, altitude,

vertical speed etc. Engine condition including propeller RPM, oil temperature Flight control inputs as applied by the pilot Flight control status as measured Environment data such as outside temperature, wind, ice, rain or snow

FDR must be operated continuously from take off roll to landing roll and 25 hours of data must be maintained. Data older than 60 days is deleted

Some items of interest

x x x x x x x x x Time Altitude Indicated airspeed Heading Thrust/power on each engine Longitudinal acceleration Pitch roll and yaw control Autopilot and autothrottle and engagement Hydraulic pressure

If the data is transmitted to the ground in real-time in addition to saving in the black box, cause of a crash can be investigated quickly In addition, if the data is monitored in real-time, any abnormal data may trigger warnings and corrective measures can be taken to avoid a disaster

Some work has been done by Kavi et. al. presenting the idea of glass box In a recent article, the authors have investigated the feasibility of such a system They are more interested in developing a data mining system to alert the pilots of unsafe conditions

Bombardier have announced their proprietary transmission system to be introduced in C-series Jets in 2013 Any proposed solution must be nonproprietary so that the global aviation industry can come to an agreement about it

It is possible to use one of the five currently available radio systems for transmission of data to ground in realtime Satellite communication is available worldwide. It may be the only option when flying over ocean

VHF radio has low bandwidth and useful within 120 nautical miles. Aircrafts are already equipped with VHF radio systems UHF radio has higher bandwidth than VHF and has the same distance range. Separate UHF radio system must be added to the aircraft

HF radio offers longer distance coverage as compared to UHF and VHF. However, it is highly susceptible to atmospheric disturbances Radar offers higher bandwidth and security of the signal. However, transponders in the plane can only transmit when radar antenna is locked on

As an example, In tests conducted by Lufthansa for providing passenger Internet, it was found that 2.4GHz band can be used in ATG (Air-to-Ground) direct connectivity with a range of 100 miles providing a data rate of 20Mbps In difficult terrains or over ocean, satellite based connectivity is a viable option. It is already being used for providing Internet to passengers on long haul flights

Slide from Lufthansa Public document Peter.Hommell @lhsystems.com

Plane can engage in continuous broadcast, broadcast only when in trouble or broadcast to nearby planes

Now let us look at our proposed distributed flight data transmission scheme

There are three types of servers defined in this scheme

Main server is at the origin airport control

tower of the flight. It initializes the flight parameters Plane server is on the aircraft for which the flight data is being recorded In addition, there is an array of small servers strategically located until the final destination of the flight

On initialization, the plane server contacts the main server and sends information about the flight identification and destination airport The main server determines all the small servers that would be receiving flight data from the plane until the final destination

Small servers are located at airports through the flight route. The distance between small servers may be 100-300 miles In case of flying over desert or ocean for hundreds of miles, small servers can be located at the edge points of vacant territory using SATCOM to achieve connectivity

Small servers also receive the approximate time window during which they would receive data from the flight This can be recorded as a soft state by the small servers

Algorithm 1: Main Server Start: Receive msg; determine source If (msg == ONLINE) then

Send ACK Send ROUTE QUERY Get ROUTE info; HANDSHAKE with small servers on route Send list of small servers on route to plane server

else
extract DATA from msg check packet number; if duplicate discard else save DATA in buffer

End

Algorithm 3: Changing Servers Start: 1. Assign ServerC = current server; ServerN=next server in line and PingCount = 0; 2. Ping ServerC and ServerN 3. If ping response received from both servers then a. Assign T1 = ServerC response time b. Assign T2 = ServerN response time c. If (T1 > T2) then i. Assign ServerC = ServerN ii. Assign ServerN = ServerN+1 4. else a. if ping response received from ServerN then i. do steps 3.c.i and 3.c.ii b. else if ping response not received from both servers then i. PingCount = PingCount+1 ii. If (PingCount == 10) then send PANIC to Main Server iii. else go back to step 2 End.

Start:

1. Get msg; determine source 2. if msg type is HANDSHAKE from Main Server; establish soft state for a specific flight 3. else if msg type is DATA then a. Process msg from Plane Server b. Send ACK to Plane Server c. Check if duplicate else save msg in buffer d. Transmit msg to Main Serve for integrated archival 4. else if msg type is END TRANSMISSION, close the connection

End.

Heartbeat messages may be added between the main server and small servers for soft state maintenance End of flight message is sent by the plane server on reaching the destination On receiving end of flight message, the small server forwards it to the main server Main server can then archive the flight data which may be available later for analysis

Packets may be assigned sequence numbers as TCP is not recommended due to its variable rate control Duplicate packets may be discarded using window buffer option Data may be only be sent if parameter values change. For example, aircraft speed and environment data may not change instantly

A study was conducted identifying the bit rate needed for all the 88 parameters mandated by FAA

Based on the required update frequency, we defined two types of packets

Packet A would be generated every second and would contain frequently updated parameters. For example, vertical acceleration is measured 8 times per second; roll attitude is measured 2 times per second Packet B would be generated once every 4 seconds and would contain less frequently updated parameters. For example, drift angle and wind speed are measured once every 4 seconds

The composite bandwidth needed for all types of packets is 1.80 kbps for all the mandated parameters There are thousands of flights in progress at a given time For example, this live map capture shows 6,115 flights in progress within USA on a Saturday morning

For 6,000 flights, the data being received at the ground would be 10.8Mbps, easily manageable with todays network capabilities By attaching flights to origin airport server and enroute servers just for duration of the flight, our scheme ensures that no servers are overloaded The flight data generates CBR (Constant Bit Rate) traffic for which the packet size and total count can be predicted well in advance

Flight data header is inserted into the payload portion of a UDP packet

Flight # (3)

Departure Date (4)

Black Box ID (4)

Packet # & type (4)

For each flight, the amount of data to be transmitted is known in advance Therefore, packet sequence numbers can be used to identify the packets for a specific flight In addition, black box ID would be unique for each flight

Aviation is complex and huge system Any proposal to implement flight data recording on earth in real-time would involve global coordination among the airlines and aircraft manufacturers Initial software based testing of the proposed scheme must be performed to remove any kinks

If there is enough interest, I am willing to supervise couple of Masters level theses as external supervisor on this topic Several students in Malaysia and Pakistan have completed Masters with me with skype based interaction My email contact is zubairi@fredonia.edu and junni@yahoo.com