Patent ID: 11867533
Assignee: THE BOEING COMPANY
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  B  H | IPC B  G  H

Claim 19:
20. A sensing method for an aircraft, comprising:
enabling a Power over Ethernet (PoE) interface through a network interface port, the network interface port including a plurality of twisted pair cables that couple the network interface port to a PoE network switch, wherein the port provides a standardized and common interface for each and all sensors that differ from one another to couple to a plurality of systems of the aircraft and bi-directionally communicate between the plurality of systems of the aircraft and the different sensors that acquire sensor measurements onboard the aircraft, wherein a network, the PoE network switch, and the network interface port differ from the plurality of systems of the aircraft and the sensors;
coupling a system on chip (SoC) to the network interface port, the SoC having an analog array, digital circuit blocks, a radio frequency (RF) interface, one or more processors, and one or more applications corresponding to a sensor protocol, the one or more applications comprising at least one of a Wireless Personal Area Network utilizing 6LowPAN, or a Thread protocol, wherein the RF interface utilizes at least one of a BLUETOOTH Low Energy, a ZIGBEE, or a Wireless Universal Serial Bus (USB), the SoC receiving electrical power from the PoE interface;
providing an interface circuit bi-directionally communicating with the sensors to acquire sensor measurements to the PoE network switch using the PoE interface, wherein the interface circuit is operably coupled to the SoC;
providing a removable memory card to store the one or more sensor measurements onto an external memory, wherein the removable memory card is configured for a Micro SD card memory, a flash memory, a multimedia card memory, or an SD card memory; and
receiving the sensor measurements from the interface circuit utilizing at least one of an analog signal, an inter-integrated circuit protocol, a serial peripheral interface bus protocol, a universal serial bus protocol, or data packets.