A flight investigation of simulated data-link communications during single-pilot IFR flight. Volume 1: Experimental design and initial test

A Flight Data Console simulation of a digital communication link to replace the current voice communication system used in air traffic control (ATC) was developed. The study determined how a digital communications system reduces cockpit workload, improve, flight proficiency, and is acceptable to general aviation pilots. It is shown that instrument flight, including approach and landing, can be accomplished by using a digital data link system for ATC communication

Simulation of a digital communication system

In this paper, basic components of a digital communication system are simulated by a computer program. The simulation program is modular and flexible to incorporate any future additions and updates. The simulation program allows the user to choose from various channel models, transmitter and receiver antenna systems, modulation and channel coding techniques. A communication system is defined by various parameters including the source, coding, modulation, antenna systems. In order to facilitate the input of these parameters and follow the flow of the simulation, the Graphical User Interface (GUI) is designed for convenience to the user. The input parameters can both be entered from the GUI or from prepared user files. The major contribution of this simulation system to the existing communication simulators is the addition of flexible antenna systems both at the transmitting and receiving ends. With this simulation program, the antenna arrays can be located anywhere on Earth, on any platform and array elements can be placed on the platform by any desired orientation. The simulation program results are compared with both theoretical computations and commercial simulator results and excellent agreement is observed in both cases

Hardware simulation of Ku-band spacecraft receiver and bit synchronizer, volume 1

A hardware simulation which emulates an automatically acquiring transmit receive spread spectrum communication and tracking system and developed for use in future NASA programs involving digital communications is considered. The system architecture and tradeoff analysis that led to the selection of the system to be simulated is presented

Flight deck benefits of integrated data link communication

A fixed-base, piloted simulation study was conducted to determine the operational benefits that result when air traffic control (ATC) instructions are transmitted to the deck of a transport aircraft over a digital data link. The ATC instructions include altitude, airspeed, heading, radio frequency, and route assignment data. The interface between the flight deck and the data link was integrated with other subsystems of the airplane to facilitate data management. Data from the ATC instructions were distributed to the flight guidance and control system, the navigation system, and an automatically tuned communication radio. The co-pilot initiated the automation-assisted data distribution process. Digital communications and automated data distribution were compared with conventional voice radio communication and manual input of data into other subsystems of the simulated aircraft. Less time was required in the combined communication and data management process when data link ATC communication was integrated with the other subsystems. The test subjects, commercial airline pilots, provided favorable evaluations of both the digital communication and data management processes

A flight investigation of simulated data link communications during single-pilot IFR flight

A Flight Data Console (FDC) was developed to allow simulation of a digital communications link to replace the current voice communication system used in air traffic control (ATC). The voice system requires manipulation of radio equipment, read-back of clearances, and mental storage of critical information items, all contributing to high workload, particularly during single-pilot operations. This was an inflight study to determine how a digital communications system might reduce cockpit workload, improve flight proficiency, and be accepted by general aviation pilots. Results show that instrument flight, including approach and landing, can be accomplished quite effectively using a digital data link system for ATC communications. All pilots expressed a need for a back-up voice channel. When included, this channel was used sparingly and principally to confirm any item of information about which there might be uncertainty

Design and Simulation of Wave Shaping Schemes for a Virtual Data Communication and Impaired Link Environment System for Advanced ICT Education

Design and Simulation of Waves Shaping Schemes for a Virtual Data Communication and Impaired Link Environment System for Advanced ICT Education is aimed at providing a simulator for the performance of digital filtering of signals for data communication experiments with the aid of MATLAB. A fundamental aspect of signal processing is filtering. Filtering involves the manipulation of the spectrum of a signal by passing or blocking certain portions of the spectrum, depending on the frequency of those portions. This work is designed to provide a flexible platform for teaching the operations of waves shaping schemes (lowpass, bandpass and highpass) modelled over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Keywords – Lowpass, Bandpass, Highpass, MATLAB

Wavelet—Artificial Neural Network Receiver for Indoor Optical Wireless Communications

The multipath induced intersymbol interference (ISI) and fluorescent light interference (FLI) are the two most important system impairments that affect the performance of indoor optical wireless communication (OWC) systems. The presence of either incurs a high optical power penalty (OPP) and hence the interferences should be mitigated with suitable techniques to ensure optimum system performance. The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and the artificial neural network (ANN) based receiver to mitigate the effect of FLI and ISI has been proposed in the previous study for the one-off keying (OOK) modulation scheme. It offers performance improvement compared to the traditional methods of employing a high pass filter (HPF) and a finite impulse response (FIR) equalizer. In this paper, the investigation of the DWT-ANN based receiver for baseband modulation techniques including OOK, pulse position modulation (PPM) and digital pulse interval modulation (DPIM) are reported. The proposed system is implemented using digital signal processing (DSP) board and results are verified by comparison with simulation data