Abstract:
The present invention is a testing system and method for testing a system having at least one data source ( 12, 14, 16, 18 ) from which test data is acquired. An interface ( 50 ) acquires test data from the data source and converts the test data into a data output formatted with a data protocol. A slave processor ( 40 ) controls acquisition of test data by the interface coupled thereto and processes the data output received from the interface which is transmitted as a data transmission. A master processor ( 30 ) receives the data transmissions and controls the testing of the system by transmitting commands to each slave processor. Each slave processor controls the interface in accordance with the commands. Each processor communicates via the target system power bus using an interface wafer and powerline modulation and algorithms.

Description:
GOVERNMENT RIGHTS  
       [0001] This invention was made with Government support under U.S. Government Contract No. F08635-98-D-0100, awarded by the United States Air Force. The Government has certain rights in this invention. 
     
    
     
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
         [0002]    1. Field of the Invention  
           [0003]    The present invention relates to systems and methods for testing systems without requiring the addition of new wiring to the system being tested, such as, but not limited to, to the testing of modifications to aircraft.  
           [0004]    2. Description of the Prior Art  
           [0005]    It is known that the power bus of a system such as a vehicle may be used to transmit information between components of the system by transmitting a modulated carrier over the bus which contains information to be transmitted between the components. See U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,438,519, 4,641,322 and 6,127,939.  
           [0006]    [0006]FIGS. 1A and 1B illustrate an interface conditioning insert wafer in accordance with the Assignee&#39;s U.S. Pat. No. 5,290,191 which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. The interior of the male connector  14 ′ includes a nonconductive plate  22 ′ that maintains the orientation of the pins  12 ′ and provides insulation thereof from the conductive shell  18 ′. The female connector  16 ′ likewise includes a nonconductive plate (not illustrated) and an array of sockets (not illustrated) for receiving the pins  12 ′.  
           [0007]    The male connector  14 ′ is shown in FIG. 1A as being coupled to electronic equipment  28 . The female connector  16 ′ is mounted on one end of an electrical cable  30 ′. The cable contains a plurality of wires that carry electrical signals between the electronic equipment  28  and other parts of the system of which the electronic equipment is a part when the connectors  14 ′ and  16 ′ are mated together.  
           [0008]    The insert wafer  10 ′ is removably inserted between the mated connectors  14 ′ and  16 ′ in order to permit an interface to be made between the electronic equipment  28  and another part of the system of which the electronic equipment is a part. The insert wafer  10 ′ has a diameter smaller than the inner diameter of the smallest connector shell and is thin enough to be inserted between the connector pair when mated together without interfering with the positive connection there between. For a MIL-C-38999 connector pair, the maximum wafer thickness may be 0.030″ so as not to interfere with normal connector mate. Insert wafer  10 ′ includes two generally parallel major surfaces  32  and  34 , along with a peripheral edge  36 . A series of holes  38  are formed between the two major faces of the wafer. Holes  38  are aligned with and slightly larger than the diameter of pins  12 ′.  
           [0009]    Circuitry, generally designated by the numeral  40 ′, is formed on the insert wafer  10 ′ and is in electrical contact with one or more of the pins  12 ′. The circuitry  40 ′may also include one or more wires  42 ′ which provide a connection to systems, components, etc., which are external to the system in which the electronic equipment  28  is contained. The circuitry  40 ′ can be any of a wide variety of devices such as active and passive electronic components, as well as more sophisticated microprocessing circuitry. The circuitry  40 ′ is generally designed to perform preselected functions associated with the conditioning of the electrical signals on the pins  12 ′ and to make external connections as described above. These functions include, but are not limited to, signal rerouting or grounding and interface protection using passive electronic components such as current/voltage monitors, transient limiters such as capacitive filters and point-to-point wiring. Active electronics such as analog and logic circuitry, matrix switches, power management devices and buffer amplifiers can be utilized to provide discrete event monitoring, integrated built-in test augmentation and diagnostics, signal processing, interface diagnostics and/or signal conditioning. Circuitry  40 ′, on the other hand, may take the form of microprocessing circuitry and may include static RAM and ROM as well as non-volatile memory. In that event, the circuitry can provide discrete event recordation and decision based signal conditioning/diagnostics.  
           [0010]    Complex systems, such as avionics, require substantial testing when being upgraded with new equipment and/or munitions. In order to ensure the operation of the new equipment or munitions, it is highly desirable to perform substantial testing in flight without the adding of new wiring to the test aircraft.  
           [0011]    The retrofitting of an aircraft to add new wiring to add new equipment and/or munitions is a complex process which can require many months of modification time and involve substantial expense. Furthermore, the new wiring adds weight to the aircraft and takes up space which is always disadvantageous in any aircraft design and is especially so with high performance aircraft in which high speed maneuverability is important.  
           [0012]    Furthermore, the testing of new equipment or munitions which are retrofitted to an aircraft requires high bandwidth to transmit test data from the new systems or munitions to a collection point where analysis of the operation of the new equipment and/or munitions is performed. Furthermore, testing in flight, after the retrofitting of new equipment and/or munitions, requires flexibility in the test regimen, such as the timing of acquisition of data from diverse data sources which are required to be accessed to evaluate the performance of the new equipment, the choice of which data source from which obtain test data is to be obtained, and furthermore, the overall parameters of testing.  
         SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
         [0013]    The present invention provides a removable non-intrusive data collection system and method which is utilized to test existing equipment or the addition of new equipment to an existing system. The new equipment may, without limitation, be retrofitted to an airframe and may include munitions. The invention facilitates testing of diverse types of existing and new equipment or systems within the system being tested without the addition of wiring to the acquire test data to support the testing system&#39;s testing regime.  
           [0014]    With the invention, a master processor is added to the system being tested which communicates, either wirelessly or by wireline communications over the power bus of the system being tested, to at least one and typically a plurality of slave processors. Each slave processor receives commands from the master processor to control the overall test regime of the system being tested. Each slave processor is coupled to a device interface which is coupled to a data source within the system being tested from which data is acquired. The data source may, without limitation, be at least one sensor within the system being tested, a data transmission line, which has been retrofitted to contain an insert wafer in accordance with the Assignee&#39;s U.S. Pat. No. 5,290,191, to gather data transmitted from a data source providing information over the data transmission line, at least one analog signal source, or a digital data bus.  
           [0015]    Each device interface may be powered by a power supply obtaining electrical power from the system being tested which, in an aircraft, typically would convert the 120 volt, 400 Hz., AC power into the appropriate AC or DC potentials necessary to operate the testing system. Without limitation, the power supply may provide either 28 volts DC or 5 volts DC which is obtained from rectification of the aforementioned 120 volt, 400 Hz, AC power supply typically present on an aircraft.  
           [0016]    The use of the insert wafer is non-intrusive and permits the obtaining of data by inserting the wafer within existing data connections, such as connected male and female data connectors which connect data cables to particular systems such as, but without limitation, in an aircraft.  
           [0017]    The device interfaces convert the native mode data input which, as described above, may be any one or more of analog or digital or from a digital data bus without limitation into a common data protocol used by all of the processors in the testing system. The native mode data input, regardless of format, and most often from multiple data formats, are inputted to the different device interfaces from different data sources within the system being tested. The native mode data format is converted to a data protocol used by all of the processors of the system, such as, but not limited to, the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP). The device interfaces function to capture diverse forms of data and to format the captured data, including conversion from analog to digital, into the data common protocol used by all of the processors in the testing system.  
           [0018]    Each slave processor controls the acquisition of test data by the associated device interface, receives the formatted data output from the device interface, and formats the received data output into a data transmission format. A media interface is coupled to each of the slave processors and functions as a wireless or wireline modem for modulating transmissions into the aforementioned data transmission protocol from the slave processor to the master processor and demodulates received transmissions from the master processor, also in the same data transmission protocol, which are forwarded to the slave processor as part of the control of the testing procedure.  
           [0019]    A media interface is also coupled to the master processor. The media interface functions as a modem. The media interface demodulates data transmissions originating from the modems associated with the slave processors and outputs the transmission in the common data protocol which all processors of the testing system use to the master processor. Furthermore, the media interface modulates commands and other transmissions outputted from the master processor which are to be transmitted to the slave processors into the same data transmission protocol used by the media interfaces associated with the slave processors.  
           [0020]    The data transmissions between the modem interfaces are transmitted either wirelessly or if the tested system power bus is to be used with a wireline transmission over the tested system power bus to which the testing system is electrically connected.  
           [0021]    Any known modulation/demodulation methodology may be used by the testing system modems. However, one form of modulation which is used in a preferred embodiment is Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), which is well known.  
           [0022]    Each of the processors in the system function as nodes in a distributed computer network. The processors are interconnected by the modulated data transmissions over either the tested system power bus or by wireless transmissions. One embodiment of the present invention utilizes the aforementioned OFDM with the data being transmitted in the testing system either wirelessly or over the tested system power bus at speeds such as, but not limited to, 10 Mbits per second. The master processor has the capability to support numerous output functions to diverse devices, including that of a memory loader verifier (MLV), which is a laptop computer interfaced to the testing system to input the control of the test regime and extract data, telemetry support which provides the transmission of data from the master processor to external locations, the recording of data, and any other output function which is desired.  
           [0023]    The distributed processing architecture of the present invention, which utilizes a master processor/slave processor relationship, permits great flexibility in the configuration and control of the testing provided by the testing system. The master processor transmits commands to the slave processors in the system to control the complete test regime including, but not limited to, the acquisition of data by the device interfaces; the configuration of the data sources from which data will be obtained; the timing of the test interval and the timing within the test interval at which individual data sources will have data acquired such as, but not limited to, time multiplexing; and the setting of test parameters for the obtaining of data. The test parameters may control a threshold for determining if data is to be obtained. The test parameters are transmitted to each associated device interface to control the acquisition of data from the associated data source. The master/slave architecture supports bidirectional data flow between the master and the slave processors.  
           [0024]    While a preferred implementation of the test system is on airframes, such as military aircraft, the present invention may be used in diverse applications where the retrofitting of new equipment requires testing to verify the operation of retrofitted new equipment without invasive effects or substantial modification of the system being tested including, but not limited to, the addition of new wiring.  
           [0025]    A testing system for testing a system having at least one data source from which test data is acquired during testing of the system in accordance with the invention includes at least one interface, each interface being coupled to a data source, which acquires test data from the data source coupled thereto and converts the test data into a data output formatted with a data protocol; a slave processor, coupled to each interface, which controls acquisition of test data by the interface coupled thereto, and processes the data output received from the interface which is transmitted as a data transmission; and a master processor which receives the data transmission and controls the testing of the system by transmitting commands to each slave processor; and wherein each slave processor, in response to a received command, controls the interface coupled thereto in accordance with the command to cause the interface to acquire the test data from the data source coupled thereto. The master processor may provide output data formatted for transmission to external equipment and may control transmission of the output data, formatted for transmission to the external equipment, to the external equipment. A modulator may be coupled to each slave processor, each modulator modulating the processed data output which is wirelessly transmitted from the modulator. Each modulator may be a modem which modulates the processed data output into a wireless data transmission which is transmitted to the master processor, demodulates a wireless transmission of commands from the master processor and outputs the commands to the slave processor coupled thereto; and another modem may be coupled to the master processor, which demodulates the wireless data transmission, outputs the received wireless transmission to the master processor, receives the commands from the master processor and modulates the received commands which are transmitted wirelessly to the at least one slave processor. At least one modulator may couple to each slave processor which each modulator modulating the processed data output which is transmitted by a power bus of the system being tested to the master processor. Each modulator may be a modem which modulates the data output into a wireline data transmission which is transmitted to the master processor, demodulates a wireline transmission of commands from the master processor and outputs the commands to the slave processor coupled thereto; and another modem may be coupled to the master processor which demodulates the wireline data transmission which outputs the wireline transmission to the master processor, receives the commands from the master processor and modulates the received commands which are transmitted by wireline to the at least one slave processor. The commands may control from which of a plurality of data sources test data is acquired during testing by commanding the slave processors responding to the received commands to control the interface coupled thereto to acquire the test data.  
           [0026]    Each interface may convert the data acquired from the data source into a single data protocol used by all of the master and slave processors. The single data protocol may be TCP/IP. The power bus may be coupled to each slave processor by an insert between the data source and the interface. The insert may be a wafer which may be disposed between connected electrical connectors which are part of an electrical signal conduit for passing data to or from the data source during operation of the system being tested. The system under test may be a vehicle which may be an airframe. At least one data source may be a data bus, a sensor which is a vehicle control, or an analog data source.  
           [0027]    Each slave processor may control at least one of a threshold which determines if test data is to be acquired dependent upon the threshold, a time at which test data is to be acquired during a test interval or a test parameter controlling conditions pertaining to the acquiring of the test data.  
           [0028]    The master processor may also control timing of the system by transmitting commands to each slave processor.  
           [0029]    A method of testing a system having at least one data source from which test data is obtained during testing of the system includes providing the system being tested with at least one interface with each interface being coupled to a data source, a slave processor coupled to each data source and a master processor coupled to each slave processor; transmitting commands to each slave processor which control the acquisition of test data by the interface coupled thereto; each slave processor decoding a received command and using the decoded command to control the interface coupled thereto which controls acquisition of the test data from the data source coupled thereto; each interface, which acquires test data converting the acquired test data from a native mode format into a data output formatted with a data protocol with all interfaces producing an output of a common protocol; and each slave processor receiving the data output and processing the data output received from the interface which is transmitted to the master processor. The transmissions between the at least one slave processor and the master processor may be wireless or over a power bus of the system being tested. 
       
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0030]    [0030]FIGS. 1A and 1B illustrate a prior art interface conditioning insert wafer in accordance with the Assignee&#39;s U.S. Pat. No. 5,290,191 which may be used in the practice of the present invention.  
         [0031]    [0031]FIG. 2 illustrates a system diagram of a testing system in accordance with the present invention used in testing of an existing system. 
     
    
     DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT  
       [0032]    [0032]FIG. 2 illustrates a testing system  10  in accordance with the present invention. The testing system  10  is connected to an existing system such as, without limitation, an airframe to test the addition of new equipment or munitions to be retrofitted thereto. The system being tested may contain numerous existing data generating devices or systems to be tested or may have new data generating devices or systems added thereto which are part of the retrofitting of the existing system with new devices, systems, and/or munitions.  
         [0033]    The possible existing or new devices to be tested are of a diverse nature. Sensors  12  provide an output from devices such as, but not limited to, vehicle controls such as pilot controls in order to determine the position of the sensors during the testing. Data transmission lines  14 , which have been opened to include an insert wafer in accordance with the Assignee&#39;s aforementioned U.S. Pat. No. 5,290,191, provide the gathering of data from a data transmission line connecting a device or system in the system being tested to another device or system. At least one analog signal source  16  such as, but not limited to, gauges, provides read outs of voltages, temperature, etc. Digital data buses  18  represent sources of computer generated data in the system being tested. Each of the aforementioned data sources  12 ,  14 ,  16 , and  18  generate data to be gathered in any native data mode, which may be without limitation analog or digital data including digital data encoded with a particular data bus protocol. The tested system power bus  22  may be utilized as the data transmission path as described below if a wireline data transmission protocol is used between the processors in the system. Sensors may also be wired in discretes as long as the discretes have power included in them.  
         [0034]    Power supply  20  converts the tested system power into the voltage required to operate the testing system which, in a preferred application, without limitation, may utilize 28 volts DC and 5 volts DC which is utilized in airframe applications. Power supply  20  may, without limitation, rectify AC, such as 400 Hz,  120  volt AC, into the aforementioned DC potentials for powering each of the components in the system.  
         [0035]    The testing system  10  is based upon a distributed processor architecture having a master processor  30  and at least one slave processor  40  which are under the control of the master processor. The master processor  30  functions as a testing system controller. The master processor  30  controls the testing and/or timing of the system by transmitting commands and/or data to each slave processor  40 . Each slave processor  40 , in response to a received command and/or data, decodes the command and/or data and executes the command to control a device interface  50  coupled thereto. The device interface  50  controls the acquisition of data from the associated data source which is one of the data sources  12 ,  14 ,  16  and  18 . A preferred embodiment of the present invention has a single slave processor  40  associated with each device interface  50  which controls acquiring of data from a single data source which is one of the data sources  12 ,  14 ,  16  and  18 . However, the present invention is not limited to a one to one relationship between the slave processors, device interfaces and data sources.  
         [0036]    Communications of information between the master processor  30  and the slave processors  40  are bidirectional. Either wireless or wireline transmissions may be used depending upon the system being tested to transmit the bidirectional communications. The master processor  30  has an associated media interface  60  which functions as a wireless or wireline modem depending upon whether the tested system power bus  22  is used for wireline bidirectional communications or wireless communications are used. The media interface  60  demodulates the data transmissions from the media interfaces  130  associated with the slave processors  40 , as described below, which may be without limitation OFDM, and provides an output to the master processor  30  in the common data protocol used by the processors such as, but not limited to, TCP/IP. The media interface  60  also modulates the commands and data which are transmitted from the master processor to each of the slave processors  40  into the data transmission protocol which may be without limitation OFDM. The media interface  60  supports one or both of wireless or wireline transmission over the tested system power bus  22 .  
         [0037]    The media interfaces  130  modulate the transmissions from the slave processors  40 , which may be in TCP/IP, into the data transmission protocol, such as, without limitation, OFDM and demodulate the transmissions from the media interface  60  which may be without limitation OFDM and are outputted to the slave processors  40  for processing. The media interfaces  130  support one or both of wireline or wireless transmission over the tested system power bus  22 .  
         [0038]    For wireline transmissions, connections between the media interfaces  130  and the tested system power bus  22  and between the tested system power bus and the media interface  60  may be by the prior art insert wafer  10  (not illustrated) but are not limited thereto. Other types of inserts besides the prior art insert wafer  10 ′ may be used in the practice of the invention to electrically connect the testing system to parts of the tested system.  
         [0039]    The device interfaces  50  have a primary function of acquiring data. The acquired data may be of a diverse nature in either analog or digital native mode form as described above. The device interfaces  50  function to convert the native mode form of the data, whether in analog or digital, into a protocol used by both the master processor  30  and slave processor  40 , such as, but not limited to TCP/IP. Utilization of TCP/IP by each of the slave processors  40  facilitates the testing system&#39;s transmission of the data between the processors of the testing system and to external devices such as a MLV  90 , external telemetry  100  for transmitting the information to other locations, a recorder  110  for recording the data and any other output application  120 . Furthermore, the device interface  50  is commanded from the associated slave processor  40  of how, when and the type of data to acquire. For example, in a particular test regime, it may not be necessary to obtain test data from all of the data sources  12 ,  14 ,  16  and  18 . The slave processor  40  may command a data interface  50  not to obtain any data during a particular test regime or furthermore, may assign time slots in a multiplexed manner under which data is to be obtained for transmission to the master processor  30  or assign thresholds or other filters to control the nature of the acquired data. The assigning of time slots avoids overloading the bandwidth transmission capability of either the wireless or wireline transmission medium over the tested system power bus  22 . Additionally, each device interface  50  may be commanded by the associated slave processor  40  to use test parameters resulting in data being acquired only under circumstances when the data is sensed to be of significance in evaluating the overall performance of the system being tested.  
         [0040]    The slave processors  40  receive the data output from their associated data interface  50 , which preferably has been formatted into a common protocol utilized by the master processor  30  and the slave processors  40 , and formats the received data output into a data format which is conditioned to be modulated by a media interface  130  into a data transmission protocol which may be either wireless or a wireline modem. The function of the media interfaces  130  is analogous to the media interface  60 .  
         [0041]    The present invention may be used with equal facility with either wireless or wireline bidirectional data transmissions between the master processor  30  and the slave processors  40 . The choice of whether to utilize the test system power bus  22  or a wireless as the transmission vehicle depends upon the particular application.  
         [0042]    The data output from the master processor  30  is formatted for transmission to external equipment such as the aforementioned MLV  90 , telemetry devices  100 , recorder  110  or other output  120  and controls transmission to the aforementioned devices.  
         [0043]    The master/slave relationship between the master processor  30  and the slave processors  40  facilitates flexibility in the designing and execution of the testing regime by the testing system  10  of the system being tested. The acquisition of data from each of the data sources  12 ,  14 ,  16  and  18  from which test data are desirable to determine operation of the tested system is fully programmable to permit variation of not only the data sources from which test data are obtained, but furthermore, control of how and when the acquiring of data occurs and the overall parameters of the testing regime.  
         [0044]    While the present invention has a preferred application for testing the retrofitting of airframes with new equipment and/or munitions, it should be understood that the present invention is not limited to retrofitting applications and may be used with any new systems where new wiring to support testing is undesirable. Furthermore, while the limited spatial considerations which are typically present in sophisticated vehicles are a preferred application of the present invention, it should be understood that the present invention may be used to test any existing vehicle whether stationary or moving.  
         [0045]    While the present invention has been described in terms of its preferred embodiments, it should be understood that numerous modifications may be made thereto. It is intended that all such modifications fall within the scope of the appended claims.