The military and commercial aerospace industry presents a variety of test requirements that test-and-measurement companies address with the gamut of products and tools extending from simulation and modeling software to test systems for the depot and flightline, as described in EE-Evaluation Engineering’s February report on the topic. Several industry experts who provided input for that report elaborate here on their product offerings, challenges their customers face, and trends that point to future needs of the aerospace test community.
Product differentiation
“There are several areas that differentiate Marvin Test Solutions from the competition,” according to Jon Semancik, marketing director at the company. As one example, he cited product support and longevity. “MTS has a proven track record of supporting products well beyond typical commercial timelines,” he said. “Many MIL/Aero customers demand long life-cycle management as the operational service life of platforms continues to be extended. Unlike other suppliers, MTS does not discontinue products after a few short years (typical with many other COTS suppliers); our goal is to quickly deliver full-spectrum, successful test solutions—making test, maintenance, and sustainment of the most mission-critical systems easier and faster, so we have made the simple yet invaluable decision to continue supporting our products and customers even decades into the future.”
Semancik noted that the company is in conformance with AS9100D1 and ISO 9001:2015.2 “The scope of the registration is for the design, development, and manufacture of aerospace test and measurement equipment and solutions employed in the functional test arena for military, aerospace, and manufacturing organizations,” he said. “MTS also adheres to AS5553,3 ensuring that sources and suppliers provide genuine parts and protect against counterfeit material in the supply chain.”
Semancik also elaborated on the company’s high-performance switching/instrumentation. “The TS-323’s core system includes the GX5960 digital subsystem, which offers best-in-class performance digital test capabilities,” he said. “Featuring a 50-MHz vector rate, programmable voltage levels per pin, timing per pin, and multiple time sets, the GX5960 subsystem provides all of the features necessary for complex functional testing or for legacy test-program migration.”
He added, “The GENASYS platform provides access to an analog bus, allowing each digital channel to have hybrid signal capability when configured with an analog switching matrix, which provides any resource to any pin signal routing. For multiplexed pin configurations, the GENASYS can be configured with 1:16 multiplexer switch cards, providing over 4,500 multiplexed pin connections to the UUT interface.”
Semancik continued, “The scalable architecture allows multiple configurations starting at 64 digital pins and a mix of low-frequency and high-frequency switching channels with matrix, multiplexer, or multimatrix topologies. Also included are system power supplies and environmental monitoring. A wide range of optional instrumentation and switching is available, allowing the GENASYS to be configured for a customer's specific needs.”
He also cited the company’s ATEasy integrated software development environment/test executive. “ATEasy is a test executive and a rapid application development framework for functional test, ATE, data acquisition, process control, and instrumentation systems,” he said. “ATEasy provides all the necessary tools to develop, deploy, and maintain software components—including instrument drivers, test programs, and user interfaces, as well as a complete and customizable test executive. It is designed to support and simplify ATE system applications with long product life cycles. ATEasy provides exceptional cybersecurity tools and features to ensure mission-critical hardware is protected against unwanted intrusion.”
According to Bob Stasonis, technical product specialist at Pickering Interfaces, “In terms of addressable markets, our uniqueness stems from the number of choices available, especially the density of our products as aerospace tends to be high channel count. For example, our 40-558 PXI matrix, which offers 40% higher switching density than our competitors, is an attractive product for those applications needing high channel counts. Also, our willingness to create new designs to address niches in the Aerospace market is a special differentiator. In addition, logistics and sustainment costs are important to depot repair—they need a quick and easy way to find faults in a test system. Fortunately, we have robust in-situ self-test applications, which makes these requirements much more efficient—in the battlefield and at the depot.
David J. Rodgers, senior program manager for SAN, Ethernet, and Fibre Channel technologies at Teledyne LeCroy, elaborated on the company’s SierraNet M168 Fibre Channel and Ethernet test platform. “The ability of the SierraNet tools to enable test and validation teams to unobtrusively observe and capture the data transactions between system components is unparalleled.” He said. “Our ‘bump in the wire’ technology allows the systems communications to occur without any retiming or other manipulation of the native transport mechanisms, a completely unfettered view. Additionally, the stateful nature of trigger, capture, and modification mechanisms enables precise, conditional data review and manipulation.”
Bloomy Controls Inc. offers products such as modules and interconnection solutions for the National Instruments (NI) Switch, Load, and Signal Conditioning (SLSC) platform. Bill Eccles, principle electrical engineer, Alan Murphy, western U.S. Sales manager, and Peter Blume, president, said the company has led the industry with COTS-based, flexible simulation platforms for the aerospace industry. “Bloomy’s portfolio is uniquely positioned to answer customers’ requirement for complex simulations using COTS systems,” they commented. “Our simulation system solutions utilize much higher levels of COTS hardware and software than previously possible, as well as standardized connectivity. This dramatically reduces the lead time for bringing new systems online. Previously, aerospace companies expended many man-months of integration effort combining various instruments from multiple vendors as well as designing and building many custom cables. Our new simulation architecture facilitates built-in fault insertion, signal duplication for simultaneous measurement of the simulation and response signals, the ability to breakout and probe any signal, as well as streamlined automated self-testing. This eliminates thousands of hours of tedium when bringing new SILs online associated with designing and building this functionality or troubleshooting signals without this functionality. Furthermore, many aerospace companies develop, maintain, and support their own in-house real-time software environment that runs models, controls simulated hardware, acquires data from the UUT, and displays what the pilot sees during simulated flight testing. This is no longer necessary using NI VeriStand, which is a COTS real-time test-cell environment. Also, NI TestStand is a COTS test executive that may be used with VeriStand to develop and run sequential test scripts. Therefore, designing, maintaining, and supporting test hardware and software tools using large internal engineering teams is no longer necessary.”
According to David Vondran, senior product marketing manager at Astronics Test Systems, “Our 60 years of proven test and integration expertise fuels our success at maximizing uptime of customer assets within our solution portfolio for aerospace test, as well as for similar mission-critical applications. Furthermore, our expertise in tactical communications and our strategic relationships with the ecosystem is our differentiation.”
Regarding the recently released ATS-3100 VRS, he continued, “This is our fifth-generation radio test platform, now capable of testing emerging software-defined radio (SDR) waveforms in addition to modern multiband radios and legacy radios (e.g. SINCGARS). Partnering with National Instruments, we’ve been able to leverage their PXI Vector Signal Transceiver to deliver the fastest test times and widest bandwidth (up to 1 GHz), enabling high throughput, reduced mean time to repair (MTTR), and maximum uptime of critical radios in the field. This solution is not only applicable to avionics radios but can expand and be used for radar, communications, navigation, and satellite applications as well.”
Brian Niehoff, technical marketing engineer at Samtec, described the company as “…the service leader in the interconnect industry. We offer MIL/Aero OEMs COTS solutions backed by ruggedized testing (called Severe Environment Testing, or SET) specific to their application. AS9102 First Article Inspection (FAI) [reports] per order and ITAR support are also available. Samtec can easily customize or modify standard products with different plating options, polarized positions and other application-specific options.”
According to a KRYTAR marketing representative, “The broadband design expertise at KRYTAR has created unique new designs, several of which have been patented. KRYTAR has applied these designs to consistently introduce technologically advanced products with superior electrical performance and ruggedness.”
“CTT engineers have developed a proprietary open architecture/common platform GaN-based power amplifier family, which relies on advanced coupler design and unique substrate material selection,” said a marketing representative at the company. “The result is a selection of adaptable, modular amplifiers requiring only a single supply voltage.”
Data acquisition is a focus of DTS. “Measuring just 42 x 42 x 13 mm with a mass of 50 g, SLICE6 AIR is optimized for size, weight, and power (SWaP),” said Huy Nguyen, aerospace and defense sales manager at the company. “The rugged module can be embedded on or in small test articles like unmanned systems, munitions, and directly on helicopter rotors without altering test dynamics. Positioning the DAQ near the sensors eliminates complicated cable runs that can get tangled or cause issues with signal or power drops, plus it helps reduce test set-up time. DTS has been able to combine an onboard recorder, power supply, signal conditioning, and Ethernet switch in one small rugged package. Right now most customers have to deal with each of these elements separately. SLICE6 AIR combines it all into one small package. It’s like a smartphone of today—years ago no one would have believed one small device could be a computer, a camera, and a phone—and do it all really well.”
“Pacific Power Source’s new line of linear-technology-based AC power sources meets the need for low-noise, low-distortion, high-quality AC power not available from general-purpose switch-mode-technology-based AC power sources commonly used for commercial product development or test applications,” said Herman vanEijkelenburg, director of marketing at the company. “With both single- and 3-phase available models covering a range of power levels from 500 VA to 30 kVA, these linear AC sources offer high-performance programmable power with modern control interfaces like LXI-compliant LAN and USB. Pacific Power also offers a broad library of power test compliance software suites for airplane equipment, including MIL-STD-704 and RTCA/DO160, as well as manufacturer-specific test standards for Airbus and Boeing.”
According to Jason Chonko, applications marketing manager at SIGLENT Technologies North America, “The flexibility and functionality of our products, like combining VNA and spectrum analysis in a portable platform, provides unique advantages to aerospace applications. If each piece of test gear can confidently test more, then the engineer can be freed up to do more.”
Challenges
“Customers are faced with supporting products and test systems beyond initial life cycle estimates,” said Semancik at MTS. “As the usable life of platforms and systems continues to be extended, customers look for solution providers with a proven long-term performance and support history. Typical commercial instrumentation manufacturers tend to be more focused on the next product launch and are therefore not as focused on long-term support, placing fielded TPSs at risk.”
“As with most other engineering-heavy industries, Bloomy’s aerospace customers are facing increased risk as test requirements increase and as budgets and timelines decrease,” said Eccles, Murphy, and Blume. “Even when time and budget permit, maintaining and modernizing custom legacy test platforms is made significantly more difficult by the retirements of subject-matter experts and by the difficulty of recruiting into the test engineering field. As a result, Bloomy’s customers seek solutions for test equipment which are largely off-the-shelf to reduce lead times, to achieve operational competency faster, and to allow their staffs to concentrate on product differentiating technologies instead of repeatedly designing and producing the common elements of test systems.”
They continued, “Bloomy’s closed-loop/hardware in-the-loop test systems achieve our customers’ goals by integrating the off-the-shelf technologies provided by Bloomy and other commercial suppliers with NI LabVIEW, TestStand, and VeriStand software platforms. Our proven team of expert test equipment designers and technicians are able to efficiently augment our customers’ engineering teams by designing and building automated testing equipment. Our customers are thereby free to conduct testing, customize the test system with product-differentiating technologies, and move onto new programs more quickly.”
According to Stasonis at Pickering, the product life/availability of test gear needs to be as long as possible. “We publicly state on our web site that switching products are available for 15 to 20 years and sometimes longer,” he said. “For defense applications that are reaching end of life—for example VXI instrumentation—we offer migrations paths from VXI switching to PXI. In order to keep our product families supportable in the long haul, we have gone through projects where we design out obsolescence in our products and ensure that newer designs are form/fit/function the same compared to older models.”
Stasonis described the challenges of integrating new technology into a test system, noting for example that the present F-35 is the 5th generation, but vendors need to still support the 4th generation. “As customers take on more and newer avionics, instead of doing unique test systems for different parts of aircraft, test engineers are focused on a common core test-system design that is scalable and relatively platform agnostic,” he said. “Pickering has a similar test strategy as we don’t focus on the platform, we focus on the switching needs. As we support the four major test platforms in the industry and most of our products are modular, it makes a test system easy to reconfigure as necessary.”
“One of the biggest challenges our MIL/Aero customers face is the need to support existing test platforms much longer than originally planned,” commented vanEijkelenburg at Pacific Power. “Test platforms are not being replaced in a timely matter due to budget constraints. This is shifting increased focus from developing new test systems to upgrading and supporting existing, aging testers. As a result, T&M equipment manufacturers are asked to support their products for long periods of time, far longer than would be the case for commercial aviation customers. In the case of Pacific Power Source, several of our programmable AC power sources have been deployed in these ATE systems for 30+ years, and we continue to support these with service, spares, upgrades, and in many cases new production units.”
“We see more complexity in the use of multichannel and multiwaveform operational scenarios,” said Vondran at Astronics Test Systems. “To meet this challenge, the test solutions correspondingly need to evolve from single channel to more versatile architectures that can validate and maintain these emerging radio applications. The challenge we look forward to is how to automate these complexities such that the test solution remains easy-to-use.”
“The biggest challenge for examination of wired communications platforms is what happens when there are problems,” said Rodgers at Teledyne LeCroy. “How does the system under test respond? What are the modes and behavior of component/system failure?”
He continued, “The SierraNet tools allow the test and validation teams to observe the system in normal working order, and then simulate or stimulate real-world failure conditions in the controlled lab setting. Presuming a failure condition requires a component or operating-system change, the change may also be tested and/or simulated in the lab setting, reducing or avoiding costly and possibly dangerous field trials.”
“The next generation of radars demand effectiveness, reliability, power efficiency, and affordability,” according to the CTT marketing representative. “CTT offers not only form, fit, function of microwave amplifier replacements for many mature systems, but also incorporates leading-edge technology components such as GaN and GaAs into new designs. Taking these factors into consideration, CTT’s latest microwave amplifier designs are truly ‘dual-use.’”
“There’s lots of development money in unmanned and autonomous systems,” said Nguyen at DTS. “From antidrone to field-deployable devices, the big cumbersome test instrumentation that needs to be built-up and configured with every test just is no longer a match for the lighter, smaller solutions being developed. SLICE6 AIR is changing test possibilities for applications like rotor measurements testing and Class I and II UAVs.”
According to Albert Ramirez Perez, aerospace industry marketing manager at MathWorks, “The aerospace industry is evolving at a slow pace due to complex and time-consuming developments that require a large, well-coordinated, and reliable supply chain. Additionally, current aerospace engineers need to satisfy more diverse customer demands by using similar technical resources, and corporations need to increase their margins by reusing as much of their legacy designs as possible while maintaining and/or increasing the quality and safety requirements of these new developments. MathWorks is supporting our customers when faced with these challenges in the three below areas.”
He cited as an example Product or Variant Management. “Given the cost of certification, justification for a change is mainly driven by specific operator demands,” he said. “Many operators have specific upgrades or technical requirements, and engineers need to evaluate and asses the technical impact of integrating these modifications into the current designs. While requirements are increasing in number and complexity, variants require a deep technical analysis to determine the risk by deciding which designs can be reused and which requirements need redesign and extra verification. MathWorks provides analysis and traceability capabilities for the design, implementation, and test cases so engineers can automatically analyze all the design artifacts and assess the impact in effort and cost when a new variant needs to be evaluated.”
He also cited Complexity, Safety, Quality, and Certification. “When engineers want to replace and automate tasks traditionally allocated to humans by any tool, then the tool must be qualified in order to obtain the confidence for the intended use case. For this purpose, MathWorks has an internal quality-assurance organization that ensures a robust development process for our tools. This tool qualification kit allows engineers to prove inhouse that the tool behaved as it was intended to behave and obtain the certification credit to automate the given tasks.”
Finally, he cited Collaboration and Supply Chain Management. “One of the most important challenges in these complex developments is the technical collaboration between engineers from aerospace corporations with different systems, experiences, and development processes. MathWorks invests heavily to understand the specification or design artifacts exchangeability needs so aerospace corporations can collaborate with shared designs, adopt agile and continuous integration, and carry on testing activities while respecting each party’s intellectual property.”
Trends
Ramirez Perez cited several trends. Defense, he said, will require more connected and intelligent future combat systems. “The new programs being developed all around the world such as the Tempest and FCAS in Europe or the KFX in Korea are driving the adoption of new development methodologies that optimize the way engineers work nowadays and the way they will maintain those programs,” he said. “Techniques such as model-based system design, machine learning, and automatic code generation and verification are key enablers for engineers to tackle the complexity of these new platforms in technology areas such as communications, electronic warfare, radar or tracking, and sensor fusion.”
With respect to civil aircraft, he commented on upgrades and electrification of power plants. “There are several projects around the globe where aircraft and engine manufacturers are collaborating to evaluate the feasibility of the electrical aircraft for short range or regional jet operations,” he said. “Most of the other initiatives rely on small upgrades such as the modernization of avionics or the integration of more electrical systems, those commonly known as x-by-wire systems.”
He also commented on autonomous vehicles for aerial urban mobility. “Traditional players such Boeing or Airbus are competing in a race against startups to be the first in the market,” he said. “This market is perceived as one of the relevant contributors to the industry in the future. However, there are many challenges that need to be resolved. For example, these challenges include increasing the endurance of the batteries or getting guidance from safety regulators to certify autonomous systems with embedded artificial intelligence that can transport civil passengers.”
Ramirez Perez also commented on MRO and predictive analytics. “Given the increased growth for mid- to long-range aircrafts in the last decade, the current aircraft backlog in production, and the forecasted speed-up of the growth—mainly in APAC—for the coming years, airlines are requesting to reduce the downtime caused by failure and maximize fleet availability and operation,” he said. “This ability to increase the ROI for the complete fleet, while ensuring maximum passenger safety, requires the guidance and approval from the safety authorities to apply nondeterministic techniques for [the European Union Aviation Safety Agency] Part-21 maintenance certification, and this is why corporations are looking at secure real-time civil communications, IoT, digital manufacturing, and integrated predictive maintenance.”
Finally, he cited space and digital transformation. “These programs have been famous for large cost overruns and schedule delays, but now agencies and large companies are feeling pressure to change and embrace the digital transformation,” he said. “Additionally, a strong competition from private investments are accelerating new technology adoption and demonstrating that the cost of access to space can be reduced dramatically. New technology areas of investments include hardware miniaturization for cubesats, GNC for launchers’ re-entry and landing, or machine learning for autonomous optical navigation for deep space exploration, robotics for autonomous satellite reparability and maintenance, or meeting the industry standards requirements.”
“Sensor and system simulation has been a hot topic recently,” said Chonko at SIGLENT. “Physically testing different subsystems and faults with arbitrary waveform generators can speed development by highlighting potential problem areas by actually introducing controlled errors to check system response,” he said, adding that testing adds confidence that a design can physically work to its simulated limits.
Concluded vanEijkelenburg at Pacific Power, “Trends are evolving slowly in aerospace applications due to regulatory and FAA requirements requiring extensive certification cycles. However, there is growing trend towards replacing hydraulic systems with electrical systems in an effort to reduce lifetime maintenance costs. Some of these are DC-power based coupled with battery storage and energy recovery techniques aimed at reducing overall energy use.”
REFERENCES
1. Quality Management Systems - Requirements for Aviation, Space, and Defense Organizations AS9100D, SAE International, September 20, 2016.
2. ISO 9001:2015, Quality management systems-Requirements, International Organization for Standardization, September 2015.
3. Counterfeit Electrical, Electronic, and Electromechanical (EEE) Parts; Avoidance, Detection, Mitigation, and Disposition AS5553C, SAE International, March 26, 2019.
