2018 International Conference on Computing, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies – iCoMET 2018
Flexible Data Acquisition System for
Aerodynamics Applications
Tassadaq Hussain
Riphah International University
UCERD
Islamabad, Pakistan
Email: tassaduq@ucerd.com
Abstract— Aerodynamics Data Acquisition System (ADAS)
acquires analog data from the sensors and converts it into digital
signals by performing different operations such as signal
conditioning, amplification, and digital conversion. With the
increase in a number of processing cores, a shift from sequential
to parallel ADAS has been observed recently. Therefore, in this
work, we have proposed and developed a Flexible Aerodynamics
Data Acquisition System (FADAS). The FADAS system aims to
achieve the considerable increase in the performance, scalability,
and programmability. To validate the performance of the FADAS
we integrate it with Angle of Attack, Pressure Transducer Unit
and environmental control system of aircraft and interfaced with
of single board computers using parallel programming models.
Keywords— ADAS, Digital, Processing, FADAS,
I. INTRODUCTION
Aerodynamics Data Acquisition System (ADAS) is an analog
interface to the digital world. It acquires data from the
temperature sensor, pressure sensor and motion sensor for
flight control operations. The output of these sensors is not
appropriate for signal processing; therefore, signals are
processed in the hardware. Signal conditioning improves the
quality of signals in terms of amplification, linearization,
compensation, filtering, and attenuation. In order to handle
different types of data and their processing, sophisticated data
acquisition systems have been developed. In the aerodynamics
industry, we require the variety of data acquisition system for
the processing of these data. Angle of Attack (AOA) [2],
Pressure Transducer Unit (PTU) [3] and Environment Control
System (ECS) [4] installed. AOA is used to measure the angle
between the oncoming winds with reference to the wing of
aircraft. It is installed on both sides of radome. Data of AOA is
used to calculate aircraft angle which helps the aircraft to
generate, when it reaches its critical limit maximum lift is
generated and beyond this limit it causes the dramatic drop in
the lift. It is installed symmetrically on both sides of the
radome. AOA sensors use vane type exposed probes with a
rotatory variable differential transformer. Each sensor has two
circuits of the independent signal converter which produces
independent output signals.
978-1-5386-1370-2/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
Ameer Hamza1 Anees Bashir2 Samad Majeed3
Riphah International University
Islamabad, Pakistan
Email: ameerhamza1520@gmail.com
Pressure Transducer unit is used to calculate the air pressure. It
is installed on the center of the radome. Pressure transducer
receives the pressure signal from Pitot Tube and output of
AOA via serial port digital port for pressure source parameter
correction of a system. Air parameter, Mach number, and AOA
signals are processed in the system where it performs
compensation and computation as per giver flight parameters.
Environment Control System is installed in aircraft to control
and monitor the cabin temperature and the cooling of avionics
units installed in the aircraft. It is controlled by the selector
switch in the cabin. It has the ability to regulate temperature
from 04-43o C.
In the current scenario AOA [2], PTU [3] and ECS [4] are
installed on independent units. They are custom designed and
each system designed for specific purpose due to this they
have performance issues. Compared to the traditional
measurement systems, the proposed FADAS is flexible and
provides cost-effective measurement solution against
processing power, productivity, and connectivity capabilities
of industry-standard computers. It can be interfaced to
heterogeneous multi-core system architectures. FADAS has
the ability to handle a number of different analog sensors data
and perform hardware level filtering.
Some salient features of FADAS are as follows.
 FADAS can handle simultaneous data of AOA, PTU,
and ECS.
 It performs signal conditioning, filtering,
amplification, attenuation, linearization in hardware.
 It provides programming environment and function
for processing sensor’s data on the multi-core system.
 Multi FEI
Sensor analog Amplification
Input Linearization
II.
Compensation
Filtering
Attenuation
Programming Environment
Figure 1 FADAS System
Model
LITERATURE REVIEW
Roberto A. et. al [2] developed model of Angle of Attack for
fixed wing flight design. In his model, they develop an
approach to acquire directly flight data and wind data by using
non-parametric smoothing functions. A step by step approach
is employed for minimizing the dimension of input space
while depending on cross-validation over the training set to
access the relative accuracy of the different applied set of
variables. It will give the optimal value for smoothing
parameters. This model is applicable to all type of aircraft
having spin flight and tunnel data. The result shows the error
of low cross-validation between predicted and measured
aerodynamic coefficients of spin maneuvers
Am et. al [3] proposed method that uses the single antenna,
Pitot tube and GPS receiver for estimation of aircraft wind
speed and direction. Independent system cannot determine
true speed, the altitude of the aircraft. They require wind
parameters for good results. However, wind parameters cannot
obtain directly from measurements. If aircraft flies at the
different altitude, banks and maneuvers then wind direction,
speed and magnitude can be estimated from the geometric
relation between measured and wind parameters. Kalman filter
is applied for the estimation of wind parameters. It also
converts the dynamic pressure to airspeed. This technique is
useful for small unmanned aerial vehicles. Simulations test are
performed for continuous 2-D wind. The trial of This proposal
is also validated on small UAV. Simulations results show
proposed method is effective on small UAVs.
Dominique [4] developed a system for providing bleed air to
the environmental control system for aircraft. The system was
based on the gas turbine engine. The system performed
multiple tasks that include the determination of demand of
bleed air for the environmental control system, providing high
and low pressure bleed air to the system in such a way that
selected air pressures are consistent with the bleed air demand
of environmental control system.
Maurizio Garbarino et. al [6] developed Empatic E3, a multi-
sensor wireless wearable device. This is used for real-time
Processing
Memory
System Computing
Record
Control
data acquisition and computerized biofeedback. It has four
sensors i.e., Electrodermal activity (EDA), temperature, 3-x
accelerometer and photo plethysmograph (PPG). It operates
both in streaming mode for real-time data processing by using
low power Bluetooth interface. It uses internal flash memory
for data recording. EDA is used for sympathetic activation of
nerve and PPG acquire data of heart rate both interrelated with
the temperature
E.S Bauer et. al [7] developed ADS a program for data
acquisition from sensor’s network. In industrial production,
sensor network monitor humidity, pressure and temperature
for the smooth flow of industrial applications. The program is
the multi-sensor and is designed in LabVIEW environment,
NI-DAQ mx virtual instrument is used for interaction between
software and hardware. A sensors network collects data after
every second and process this data and forwards it to operating
unit for monitoring of humidity, pressure, and temperature.
Ren C.Luo et. al [8] developed an intelligent robot which is
capable of handling multi sensor data. Their work is based on
the PUMA 560 robot. Data acquired from position, tactile
array, overhead vision, cross-fire, eye-in-hand, slip-sensing
device, overload proximity and force/torque. Data from all
sensor fusion acquired to determine the action taken by robot
for interacting with the real world.
III. MULTI CORE AERODYNAMICS DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM
In this section, we will explain internal architecture and
functions of FADAS. This section is further categorized into
four subsections; the Front-end Interface, the Processing
System, the Memory System and the Programming
Environment.
A. Front-end Interface
FADAS is interfaced with multiple sensors using Front-end
Interface (FEI). The FEI of FADAS consists of multi analog to
digital converters (ADC) and signal drivers. FADAS supports
maximum of 16 channel analog input signals. The basic
objective of a signal driver is to achieve functions like
amplitude scaling, buffering, differential-to-single-ended,
single-ended to differential conversion, filtering, and common-

mode offset adjustment. The FEI receives an analog electrical
signal from multi-sensors and forwards these signals to signal
driver. After performing basic operations, these signals are
forwarded to ADC. The block diagram of single Front-end
Interface is shown in Figure 2.
B. Processing System
The processing system of FADAS support heterogeneous [8]
[9][10] multi-core systems architecture. It supports multiple
core Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) system GPU
based system and FPGA based System. FADAS support
variety of single board computer. In the current evaluation,
the system is tested with Odroid, Raspberry Pi based Multi
RISC system, Jetson TK-1 based GPU system and ZYBO
based FPGA system. This architecture provides achieve high
performance, draw draws less power and consumes low
hardware resources. FADAS can be interfaced with the
variety of single boards computers
 Central Processing unit (CPU)
 Multi core RISC based processing system.
(FPGA)
C. Memory System
FADAS uses intelligent memory controller [11] [12] [13] and
memory system [14] [15] [16] that improves the processor
memory performance. FADAS three types of memory, Local
memory, Main Memory and External Memory
The Local Memory is used to execute real-time applications
(e.g. Vibrator sensor, examples few). The designed
architecture uses real-time processing which acquires data
from sensors. In this structure frequently used data is stored
dynamically. The effective address and valid address
determine the time of reading /write operation. The memory
provides high performance by providing data to the processing
system without delay.
The Main Memory uses DRAM which has access latency
higher than Local Memory. The memory is used for
application processing having the huge data set which does not
fit in Local Memory at run-time.
The External Memory is used to store data permanently. The
External Memory uses Non-Volatile Memories (NVM) (e.g.
Flash memory, etc.). The External Memory has unpredictable
read/write delay therefore used for non-real time applications.
D.
P
rogramming Environment
Algorithms for acquiring data from Aerodynamics sensors
have different design constraints, for this, a user-friendly
programming interface is required to write the application for
multi-sensors and processing cores. Open Multi-Processing
(OpenMP) and Open Accelerator (OpenACC) programming
tools are used to parallelize the program. OpenMP tool is
Application Programming Interface (API) which is used in
the CPU based processing system. It is capable of handling
multi-platform, multi-processing by using shared memory
architecture. OpenACC is used to parallelize the
Heterogeneous GPU system architecture. OpenACC
parallelizes the parallel loop by updating the compiler that all
iterations are independent, on the basis of this information it
parallelizes the code as per hardware resources availability.
OpenMP and OpenACC eliminate the stress of manually
fixing sensors data transfer and fulfill the programmer
demands of algorithms. FADAS programming toolkit has the
ability to call the function for transfer data between FEI and
Memory system, and perform data management to execute
the different application on the processing system. Moreover
in this programming toolkit programmer does not need to take
care of related hardware design constraints.
IV. RESULTS
To demonstrate the capability of FADAS, multiple tests are
conducted. The test experiments are further categorized into
Bench-testing, Interfacing, Data Transfer and Data
Processing.
V. TEST APPLICATIONS
In order to validate the system performance of FADAS.
We execute the Pressure Transducer Unit and Angle of Attack
for different aerodynamics position and altitude while
keeping the cabin and avionics panel temperature under
controlled by Environment Control System.
VI. FEATURES OF FADAS
FADAS is interfaced with Pitot Tube, AOA and temperature
sensor. The FEI converts these analog signals into digital.
These signals are processed and forwarded to memory for
storage or further processing. It supports up to 16 channels
analog I/Ps. Performance of FADAS is validated by Odroid
XU3 and Raspberry Pi. Features of FADAS is shown in table
below

Table Features of FADAS
VII. INTERFACING
In this experiment the FADAS is connected with sensor
and processing system. The interfacing tests are further
categorized into two part sensor interfacing and
processing system interfacing.
A. Sensor Interfacing
During sensor interfacing test, aerodynamics sensors Angle of
Attack (AOA), Pressure Transducer Unit (PTU) and
Environment Control System (ECS) are used. The output
signal of these sensor starts from 10 Hz to 1 Mega Hz. The
processing system interfacing test includes interfacing of
FADAS with different an Odroid, JetsonTK1 and Raspberry
Pi Signal Board Computers as shown in Figure 3. The results
show that the FADAS can handle multiple sensors and
transfer after performing filtering, signal condition and
digitization in hardware. FADAS can be interfaced with a
variety of processing system using parallel and serial ports.
The serial port of FADAS has the ability to transfer up to 576
Kilobits per second and parallel port of FADAS allows data
transfer up-to 10 Mega Byte per seconds.
Figure 3 Interfaced with variety of SBC
VIII. MULTI-SENSOR DATA TRANSFER
In this experiment, FADAS data transfer speed by accessing
data from multiple sensors is measured. For the experiment
three aerodynamics sensors (PTU, AOA and ECS) are used
that provides, simultaneous signals. Each sensor has
maximum 1K Hz frequency.
The key issue of the multiple sensors signaling is receiving
the signals synchronously, in the right format and on the right
bus. The FADAS system sends the configuration data to all
sensors and ensures that they are properly configured and
synchronized. Once both sensors are set up and synchronized,
both sensors begin to transmit signal data.
Results show that FADAS system handles multiple
aerodynamics sensors signals and support system up to 10 K
samples per seconds.
IX. SIGNAL PROCESSING
The signal processing is performing on processing system
side. We provide and configure C++ and Python language
support to the processing system that accesses data from
FADAS system efficiently. We applied different filtering
applications to validate the system as shown in figure 3.
Different types of algorithms are used for acquiring data from
multiple sensors because every sensor has different design
constraints. For this, a user-friendly programming interface is
required to write the application for multi-sensors and
processing cores. OpenMP and OpenACC programming tools
are used to parallelize the program. These parallel
programming tools eliminate the stress of manually fixing
sensors data transfer and fulfill the programmer demands of
algorithms. FADAS programming toolkit has the ability to
call the function for transfer data between FEI and Memory
system, and perform data management to execute the
different application on the processing system. Moreover, in
this programming toolkit programmer does not need to take
care of related hardware design constraints.
X. CONCLUSIONS
In this research we proposed and developed an FADAS which
has the ability to handle multi aerodynamics sensor data, can
perform signal conditioning, filtering and linearization in the
hardware, it can be interfaced with variety of SBC and it can
provide programming environment for processing sensors data
on multi core system architecture.
Designed FADAS has ability to handle variety of
aerodynamics sensors and transfer data after performing
filtering, signal conditioning and digitization in the hardware;
it is interfaced with Odroid XU3, Jetson TK-1 and Raspberry
Pi SBCs. It can provide C++ and python language to support
processing system which can access data from FADAS
efficiently.
References
[1] High-Speed Digital System Design: A Handbook of
Interconnect Theory and Design Practices. Stephen
H. Hall, Garrett W. Hall, James A. McCallISBN: 978-
0-471-36090-2
[2] Roberto A. Bunge, Ilan M. Kroo High Angle of
Attack Aerodynamic Model Identification for Spin
Recovery Simulation Using Non-Parametric
Smoothing Functions. Atmospheric Flight Mechanics
Conference. 8–12 January 2018
[3] Am Cho, Jihoon Kim, Sanghyo Lee, Changdon Kee.
Wind Estimation and Airspeed Calibration using a
UAV with a Single-Antenna GPS Receiver and Pitot
Tube. IEEE transactions on aerospace and electronic
systems vol. 47, no. 1 January 2011
[4] Dominique Patrick Sautron. United states patent.
Enhanced method and aircraft for pre-cooling and
environment control system using a two wheel turbo
machine with supplement heat exchange dated of pub
Mar.1,2018
[5] Maurizio Garbarino, Matteo Lai, Dan Bender,
Rosalind W. Picard and Simone Tognetti. Empatica
E3 - A wearable wireless multi-sensor device for real-
time computerized biofeedback and data acquisition,
International Conference on Wireless Mobile
Communication and Healthcare Transforming
healthcare through innovations in mobile and
wireless technologies, 2014.
[6] E.S. Bauer, L.V. Galsanova, and L.I. Khudonogova.
Design and implementation of program for data
acquisition and Processing in sensor networks with
temperature sensors. Scientifically practical
conference information and measuring technique and
technology, May 2015
[7] Ren C. Luo, Min-Hsiung Lin, And Ralph S. Scherp.
Dynamic Multi-Sensor Data Fusion System for
Intelligent Robots IEEE Journal of Robotics And
Automation, Vol. 4, No. 4. August 1988
[8] Tassadaq Hussain, Amna Haider, Adrian Cristal,
Eduard Ayguadé. Embedded Multi Vector-core
System. Journal of Systems Architecture. 2018/4/23
[9] Tassadaq Hussain, Oscar Palomar, Adrian Cristal,
Eduard Ayguade, Amna Haider. An FPGA based
Multi Vector Processor Architecture. The 13th
International Bhurban Conference on Applied
Sciences & Technology. 2016/1/14 IEEE
[10] Hussain Tassadaq, Ali Jawad, Sabir Shaheryar, Sair
Ubaid, Kamran Faysal. Real Time Face Recognition
on GPU based Architecture. 4th International
Conference on Electrical, Computer, Mechanical and
Mechatronics Engineering 2016/2
[11] Tassadaq Hussain, Oscar Palomar, Adrian Cristal,
Osman Unsal, Eduard Ayguade, Mateo Valero.
Advanced Pattern based Memory Controller for
FPGA based Applications. International Conference
on High Performance Computing & Simulation.
International Conference on IEEE 2014
[12] Tassadaq Hussain, Muhammad Shafiq, Miquel
Pericàs, Nacho Navarro, Eduard Ayguadé. A
Programmable Pattern based Memory Controller. 8th
International Symposium on Applied Reconfigurable
Computing (ARC) 2012.
[13] Tassadaq Hussain, Miquel Pericas, Eduard Ayguadé
Reconfigurable memory controller with
programmable pattern support. 5th HiPEAC
Workshop on Reconfigurable Computing (WRC),
Heraklion Crete 2011
[14] Tassadaq Hussain. A memory controller for
heterogeneous multi-core system. Microprocessors
and Microsystems. Publication date 2015/11/1
[15] Tassadaq Hussain, Oscar Palomar, Adrian Cristal,
Osman Unsal, Mateo Ayguade, Eduard and Valero
Memory Access Pattern based Controller. 24th
International Conference on Field Programmable
Logic and Applications (FPL) 2014/9 IEEE
[16] Tassadaq Hussain, Oscar Palomar, Adrian Cristal,
Osman Unsal, Eduard Ayguade, Mateo Valero.
Advanced Multi-core Memory Controller.
2014/12/10 on IEEE