Curtiss-Wright's Axon Next-Gen Compact Flight Test Data Acquisition Unit is Shipping
January 15, 2018
News
New high-speed, light-weight, compact Axon DAU provides FTI engineers with unprecedented combination of flexibility, scalability, and reliability.
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| Curtiss-Wright\'s Axon(tm) Next Generation Compact Flight Test Data Acquisition Unit (DAU) is Now Shipping |
Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division today announced the general availability of production units of the next-generation compact Axon Data Acquisition Unit (DAU) for flight test applications. Axon combines unprecedented flexibility and scalability with high speed and outstanding reliability for demanding flight test applications. The innovative modular Axon DAU builds on Curtiss-Wright’s heritage as a supplier of rugged reliable data acquisition. Optimized for size, weight and power (SWaP), Axon works with Curtiss-Wright’s Acra KAM-500 and TTC DAUs, while reducing volume by 55% and weight by 41% compared to a standard KAM-500 chassis. Axon is ideal for use in aircraft flight test instrumentation, airborne telemetry, flight data monitoring and space data handling applications.
Designed to deliver maximum reliability, Axon’s hardware-based acquisition engines eliminate data loss, support deterministic operation, and ensure immediate recovery in the case of power brownout. Axon’s high-speed serial backplane (1 Gbps dedicated link per module) enables off-the-shelf data acquisition modules to be placed in ultra-miniature Axonite housings and located remotely, separated from the chassis by up to 20 meters. Locating data acquisition closer to the sensors can significantly decrease the installation time and cost of the instrumentation while simultaneously reducing wiring weight. Using Axonite housings (
Axon’s solid chassis design provides environmental ruggedness and supports rapid configuration changes. The DAU’s high-speed serial backplane ensures that the chassis’ throughput can scale with future increases in data source bandwidth, protecting the customer’s investment in the current generation of acquisition modules.
Configurations built with a combination of Axon and other Curtiss-Wright DAUs are able to support the synchronous sampling of every channel in the system. Because Axon supports the same data formats as other Curtiss-Wright DAUs, data from both the remote and main DAUs can be simultaneously analyzed and correlated. For configuration, Axon is supported by Curtiss-Wright’s powerful and intuitive DAS Studio and TTCWare setup software packages.
