L-3 Communications Telemetry-West
L-3 Communications Telemetry-WestL-3 Communications Telemetry-WestL-3 Communications Telemetry-WestL-3 Communications Telemetry-WestL-3 Communications Telemetry-West
L-3 Corporation




 

 

Versatility and Experience

L-3's Proven Experience

L-3’s Visual Test System™ (VTS) is the industry’s most trusted PC-based data acquisition system, with hundreds of installations worldwide. Applications range from airborne system checkout to real-time analog and digital data acquisition to shuttle range safety verification. Time and again, our customers turn to us for additional VTS systems to support expanded or entirely new requirements. Proof positive of the Visual Test System’s unmatched success in the field.

Missile Engineering and Manufacturing Test
Raytheon is using multiple VTS systems for a variety of development and production tests for the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM). The systems demonstrate the effectiveness of PC technology in dramatically reducing test equipment complexity and cost while meeting requirements for simplicity, availability, reliability, and performance. GUIs that conform to Microsoft Windows make it much easier to obtain and interpret real-time missile test data. In addition, the VTS Software Development Kit (SDK) and the system’s application programming interface allow engineers to integrate VTS units into existing test systems with minimum impact on in-house software.

Space Vehicle Launch
When engineers at Orbital Sciences Corporation needed a launch monitoring system to support their wide array of launch vehicles, they chose the VTS for its versatility and performance. Orbital’s VTS-based launch system decommutates, displays, archives, and processes real-time data and provides limit-checking capabilities crucial in making go/no-go launch decisions. Using the VTS, engineers can group blocks of launch vehicle parameters together to more efficiently zero in on alarms and speed launch monitoring decisions.

Range Safety
AlliedSignal Technical Services Corporation deployed five Visual Test Systems to meet their need for flexible and reliable telemetry processing capabilities to support range safety requirements for the Shuttle. The systems receive, process, extract, multiplex, and retransmit shuttle range safety data. Each receives one PCM wavetrain at a time*, decommutates each wavetrain, extracts identified range safety parameters, creates a forward link based on the extracted range safety measurements from all four sources in a predetermined hierarchy, and transmits the range safety wavetrains to a number of remote stations over an RS-422 network interface.
* Each wavetrain includes two embedded PCM wavetrains with voice and data.

Flight Test System Checkout
Sikorsky is relying on a multiprocessor VTS system on the flight line to check out entire airborne telemetry systems prior to flight test. The VTS verifies sensor calibration, data acquisition, PCM encoding, and video transmission subsystems.

Sikorsky’s VTS supports two independent streams and provides PCM receiving, bit synchronization, decommutation, processing, archiving, and quick-look display capabilities. When connected to a network port, the VTS transfers real-time or archived data to a heritage ground station, freeing the range ground station for other flight tests. In the future, the system can be expanded to simultaneously acquire data directly from MIL-STD-1553 and ARINC 429 avionics buses.

Balloon Flight
Four VTS systems are being used at Holloman AFB in New Mexico and in various worldwide locations for everything from balloon control checkout to flight data analysis. During checkout, the VTS’ integral simulator helps to verify that each bit in the defined stream is functional. The instrumentation system is then moved to the flight line, where the entire data acquisition system is checked — from sensor integration to processing to data archiving. During flight test scenarios, multiple systems can continuously monitor and capture data as required. Real-time and archived data is sent to scientific teams for analysis, often providing unprecedented insight into atmospheric phenomenon, or proving the equipment or experiment on board the payload.

Avionics Bus Test
At numerous locations worldwide, the VTS is being used as a replacement for L-3’s venerable Serial Bus Analyzer (SBA) MIL-STD-1553 bus tester. The VTS allows avionics engineers to test, debug, and verify MIL-STD-1553 subsystems on the “hot bench” or in the vehicle to ensure that new versions of hardware are compatible with embedded software. Additionally — using only the VTS — engineers can record all data to disk (limited only by disk capacity) to quickly monitor 1553 traffic with the “Activity” page and to perform BC and RT simulations. The system’s ability to parameterize MIL-STD-1553 data words and display data alongside PCM, analog, and other inputs, makes the VTS a powerful tool for throughput evaluation and complete system testing.