International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 35 Number 2- May 2016
Wireless Black Box System for Airborne
Vehicles
B.Sudha1, Megha K2, Chaitra V2, Vaishnavi P2
1
Assistant Professor, Department of Telecommunication Engineering, Bangalore Institute of Technology,
Bangalore, India
2
UG. Student, Department of Telecommunication Engineering, Bangalore Institute of Technology, Bangalore,
India
Abstract— For airborne vehicle such as helicopters,
commercial flights a flight data recorder called black
box is placed near the tail end of the vehicle that
screens all the data that includes engine parameters,
cabin parameters, conversations of the cabin crew
and videos related to cockpit area. A Flight Data
Recorder (FDR) (also referred as Accident Data
Recorder (ADR)) is a device used to record specific
aircraft performance parameters. In case of accident
occurs due to pilot error, mechanical error, weather
abnormalities, sabotage and other human errors, this
black box will help in analyzing the cause of the
accidents for further course of actions. During
accidents when flights get crashed there is a tendency
to lose the black box and it becomes difficult to
retrieve the relevant information’s related to reasons
for the accidents. Hence in the proposed work we
have designed and simulated a novel system called
wireless Black box for airborne vehicles. The data
from the FDR is transferred to a solid state recording
device and then periodically analyzed with some of
the same technology used for accident investigations.
box", the data recorded by the FDR is utilized for
accident examination and also to analyze air
wellbeing issues, material debasement and motor
execution. Because of their significance in exploring
accidents, these ICAO-controlled devices are
precisely designed and developed to withstand the
power of a fast effect and the warmth of a serious
flame. As opposed to the "black box" reference, the
outside of the FDR is covered with warmth safe
splendid Red paint for high perceivability in
destruction and the unit is normally mounted in the
flying machine's empennage (tail segment) where it
will probably survive a serious accident. Taking after
an accident, recovery of the "black boxes" is second
in significance just to the salvage of survivors and
recovery of human remains. This has likewise offered
ascend to flight data observing projects whereby
flights are analyzed for ideal fuel utilization and risky
flight crew propensities. The data from the FDR is
transferred to a strong state recording device and
intermittently analyzed with a portion of the same
technology utilized for accident.
Keywords — temperature sensor, black box, FDR,
ADR, fire sensor, tilt sensor, voltage sensor.
I.
INTRODUCTION
A FDR is a sort of flight recorder which is a device
used to record particular airship execution parameters.
Another sort of flight recorder is the cockpit voice
recorder (CVR) which records conversations in the
cockpit, radio correspondences between the cockpit
crew and others (including discussion with air traffic
regulation work force) and in addition surrounding
sounds. Now and again, both capacities have been
joined into a solitary unit as appeared in Fig 1.current
material FAA TSO is C124b titled Flight Data
Recorder Systems. Prevalently alluded to as a "black
ISSN: 2231-5381
Fig 1. Black box in the flight. Google.Inc
II.
THE BLACK BOX
The black box is a rough, fortified, water evidence
box, which houses two types of gear, (i) Flight data
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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 35 Number 2- May 2016
recorder (FDR) alternately Accident Data Recorder
(ii) Cockpit voice recorder (CVR). It might be the
best single development in history of security
designing. The first black box was created by Dr.
David Warren of Australia in 1953 and was
underway by 1957 [2]. FDR records data from an
assortment of plane sensors furthermore records the
specialized condition of the airship. The data
gathered in the FDR framework can help agents to
figure out if an accident was brought on by the pilot's
mistake, an outer event(such as climate), or a plane
system(such as mechanical or electrical failures).The
data gathered by a FDR shift as per whether the
airplane is in the takeoff, cruising or landing stage.
Third era FDR (SSFDR) can record 256 parameters
for up to 25 hours. The CVR records discussions of
the group or some other sounds that happen inside the
cockpit. The FDR records a wide range of working
elements of a plane. The data from black box has
empowered examiners to surmise the reasons for
most accidents furthermore to think of preventive
measures that have spared a large number of lives.
Until the black box is found, the crash investigators
can't pinpoint the reason for the accident and can't
find a way to anticipate comparable disappointments
in future. The black box were painted black in before
days to fight off the stray beams of light that may
have demolished the photographic film that put away
the data [3].Recently the data is put away on memory
contributes the black box what's more, are painted
splendid orange, with the goal that it is anything but
difficult to discover them in the midst of accident
flotsam and jetsam or the base of the sea. They are
worked as sturdily as a divider safe. They have been
outfitted with self activated ultrasonic pillars known
as submerged locator reference point (ULB) or
submerged acoustic guide. The ULBs show the box's
position submerged for up to 30 days. In a black box,
both the computerized data and voice data are put
away in stacked semi conductor dynamic RAM
memory sheets. The black box is consequently the
most essential commitment to air wellbeing since the
start of business flight. Black boxes are a gathering of
data accumulation gadgets mounted in the
empennage of a flying machine. The recorders are
housed in enormously solid materials, for example,
titanium, and protected to withstand an accident sway
ordinarily the power of gravity and temperatures of
more than 1,000 degrees Celsius. The recording
ISSN: 2231-5381
material is itself protected against accidental erasure.
Present day black boxes record up to 300 elements of
flight including: Airspeed also, elevation, heading
and vertical quickening, flying machine pitch,
cockpit discussions and radio communications. The
wellbeing safety measures are intended to guarantee,
hypothetically, that accident examiners will have the
capacity to recoup the recorders, accumulate a full
photo of a flying machine's last minutes from the
recordings and afterward precisely clarify what
turned out badly.
Fig 2. Block diagram of the proposed Remote Black
box
I.
HARDWARE UTILIZATION
The hardware part consists on the sensors and the
black box installed into the aircraft. This part mainly
collects the status of sensors and saves it to the PC
[4].
A. Temperature sensor
The LM35 series are precision integrated-circuit
temperature sensors, whose output voltage is linearly
proportional to the Celsius (Centigrade) temperature.
Some of the features are its rated for full −55° to
+150°C range, Suitable for remote applications, Low
cost due to wafer-level trimming, Operates from 4 to
30 volts, Less than 60 μA current drain, Low selfheating, 0.08°C in still air. In our proposed work a
Temperature sensor is used to detect the variation in
the temperature throughout the flight to investigate
the flight crash.
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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 35 Number 2- May 2016
B. Voltage Sensor-Trim pot
A trimmer is a miniature adjustable electrical
component which is used in circuits for tuning and
recalibration. For higher adjustment resolutions,
multi-turn trim pots are used. The amount of turns
varies between roughly 5-25, but 5, 12 or 25 turns are
quite common.
C. Thermistor-Fire Sensor
A thermistor is a type of resistor whose resistance is
dependent on temperature, more so than in standard
resistors. NTC thermistor (Negative Temperature
coefficient), reduces substantially its electrical
resistance with temperature increase. Some of the
features are the typical size of a thermistor is
0.125mm to 1.5 mm. The useful range of temperature
that we can get in thermistor is -100°C to +300°C.
Commercial available thermistors have the nominal
values of 1K, 2K, 10K, 20K, 100K, etc. This value
indicates that the resistance value at the temperature
of 25°C. Thermistor detects the fire when flight
undergoes with accident due to mechanical error.
architecture. By executing powerful instructions in a
single clock cycle, the ATmega32 achieves
throughputs approaching 1 MIPS per MHz allowing
the system designer to optimize power consumption
versus processing speed. One 16-bit Timer/Counter
with Separate Presales Compare Mode, and Capture
mode, 8-channel, 10-bit ADC, Programmable Serial
USART.
G. LCD Interface
The Hitachi LM018L is a 40 character x 2 line
reflective type Liquid Crystal character display
module. It includes a built-in LSI controller
HD44780 which provides a range of features,
including 192 5x7-dot characters plus 8 user-defined
characters some of the Instruction functions which
can be performed are Display Clear, Cursor Home,
Display On/Off, Cursor On/Off, Character Display
Blink, Cursor Shift, and Display Shift.
D. Tilt Sensor
GY-61 is a small, thin, low power, complete threeaxis accelerometer. It can measure the tilt-sensing
applications in the static acceleration of gravity, and
movement, shock or vibration due to dynamic
acceleration. 3~5V power supply, 400uA supply
current, Analog output communication interface,
Operating Temperature -40 ° ~ 85 °.
E. Emergency switch
An emergency stop push button switch is used as a
safety measure to stop hazardous loads and for giving
indication to take immediate action.
In order to control all these sensors and their inputs a
microcontroller is used. This will allow the control
circuit to be realized by a minimum of circuits. Thus
resulting in less maintenance, minimization of the
occupied space and reduced costs. Our proposed
remote black box system block diagram is as shown
in Fig 2.
F. Atmega32 microcontroller
ATmega32 is a low-power CMOS 8-bit
microcontroller based on the AVR enhanced RISC
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Fig 3. LCD interfacing with ATMEGA 32
II.
PROPOSED FLIGHT TRACKING AND
TRACING SYSTEM
The proposed framework is a constant remote
checking framework that transmits and tracks
aeronautics information through Wireless
transmission. It gives fast after-accident recovery,
real time alarms and information digging for
operational proficiency.
A. Favorable circumstances
The proposed framework could even anticipate
crashes by making it conceivable to ready pilots
of hazardous conditions before the unfortunate
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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 35 Number 2- May 2016
mishap. This framework targets and uses the
aeronautics framework for a general versatile and
Ubiquitous arrangement [4].
The primary focal points are:
 In the occasion of irregular conduct, this
framework could even naturally ask for extra
data. It could likewise safeguard information
from numerous flying machines, over
numerous flights and numerous years, and
mine this data with complex calculations to
recognize the indications of repeating issues.
 The framework would offer omnipresence,
immunity,
boundless
capacity
and
unparalleled forces of inquiry.
 Software operators can consequently log
upkeep
prerequisites
utilizing
flight
information.
 The motor information can be utilized via
aircrafts and plane makers to upgrade fuel
productivity and to search for what's more,
settle inconvenience spots before it is past the
point of no return. That is, to perform
information mining.
 Black box producers might want to actualize
real-time information move notwithstanding
sparing the information in the black box. That
is, to do item improvement.
 No significant gear is required. Just black box
and receiver system is to be interfaced
remotely.
 No retraining of team as the framework is
completely mechanized (fitting and play).
This is due to the interface of zigbee connection in
between the microcontroller and the computer, in
addition to the specific programs written for both
of them.
ZigBee is an IEEE 802.15.4 based specification
for a suite of high level communication protocols.
It can transmit data over long distances by passing
data through mesh network of intermediate
devices to reach more distant ones. The choice of
the microcontroller's transmission protocol was
the standard asynchronous format using 8 data
bits, no parity 255 bit and one stop bit with a 9600
baud rate.
GPS, which stands for Global Positioning System,
is a radio navigation system that allows land, sea,
and airborne users to determine their exact
location, velocity, and time 24 hours a day, in all
weather conditions, anywhere in the world.
B. Data Reception
In receiver part, zigbee module decrypts the data
sent from the transmitter and sends to USB to
UART convertor and received data will be
displayed on PC/LAPTOP [5]. A universal
asynchronous receiver/transmitter, UART is
a computer hardware device that translates data
between parallel and serial forms. UARTs are
commonly
used
in
conjunction
with
communication standards.
III.
IMPLEMENTATION
The flight data recorder has been implemented on
windows platform using LABVIEW for testing
and simulation purposes which further explained
in following sections.
A. Data Transmission
The Remote Black Box consisting of embedded
microcontrollers, sensors and gauges determines
the flight parameters and stores the flight
parameters which house the flight data recorder.
A transmitter called ZigBee is connected and it
transmits the flight data simultaneously to ground
servers. One of the main characteristics of this
system is that only the authorized people could
access the true interpretation of the black box data.
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Fig 4. Flow chart of the software program implementation
IV.
SOFTWARE RESOURCES
The main functions of the AVR Studio and
LABVIEW program and how the user will be
shown the data recorded before, during, and after
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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 35 Number 2- May 2016
the accident is explained in this section. The main
duties of this program are to receive data serially,
interpret, and finally display it to the user in a
clear and simple way [5]. Flow chart of the
software programming implementation is as
shown in Fig 4. The AVR Lib c package provides
a subset of the standard C library for Atmel AVR
8-bit RISC microcontrollers. AVR-libc is
primarily targeted to support programming AVR
microcontrollers using the C (and C++) language.
LabVIEW is a powerful, efficient, easy to use
industry standard tool. LabVIEW (Laboratory
Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench) is a
development environment based on the graphical
programming language G. LabVIEW empowers
us to build our own solutions for scientific and
engineering systems.
V.
RESULTS AND OUTCOMES
In this section, certain cases in which the flight
parameters such as, temperature of the engine,
Battery Voltage, Tilt/Vibration sensors, Fire
sensors, Latitude, Longitude, Altitude, Emergency
Indication are realized [6]. Some of the cases are
described below:
Fig 5. An example of result outcome of case1
CASE 1: In this case a threshold temperature is
set to 35 degree Celsius and as the temperature
increased above the threshold an indication is
shown in the front panel where LED glows and
turns red in color indicating abnormality as in Fig
5 and Fig 6.
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Fig 6. An example of result outcome of case2
CASE 2: In this case a threshold temperature is set
to 35 degree Celsius and as the temperature
increased above the threshold and also as tilt is in the
range of alert set value an indication is shown in the
front panel where LED glows and turns red in color
indicating abnormality as in figure and emergency
switch is used in indication of danger which is
indicated by red glow with a beep sound.
VI.
PROTOTYPE OF THE SYSTEM
At this time the above described system is at the
prototyping stage. The project containing the
system integration and prototyping of the system
is in progress. There are certain disadvantages in
our present system such as area of coverage is
100mts and minimum of 15-20feet for GPS
tracking. Thus this system needs some
advancement to be implemented in real time
flights and aircrafts.
VII.
SECURING FLIGHT DATA
The Flight data recorder employs data encryption
techniques that enhance the protection. Zigbee
provides secured networking by 128 bits
symmetric encryption keys. ZigBee uses MAC
layer security and advanced encryption Standard.
The GPS data which is received consists of all the
information coming from the satellite which itself
is difficult in extracting only the required data
such as position (latitude, longitude) and altitude
it resembles a type of encrypted data. In order to
fetch the data, certain functions in software
resource are used and finally displayed on the
screen.
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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 35 Number 2- May 2016
VIII. CONCLUSION AND FUTURESCOPE
In this paper, the real-time flight tracker system is
designed to circumvent the need to find the black
box after a flight accident. The system is reliable
and realistic given the bandwidths available today.
Some of the advantages are - Data is safe in the
remote client without fear of losing. Existing
system black box gets lost if aircraft falls in sea or
remote forest which takes lots of time. This does
not happen in this system. Crew can be alerted
from ground station if any problems do occur in
the aircraft and corrective action can be taken.
The system is viable and economical. The crew
will be active and alert all the time as they have to
respond in real time. The system is mainly for
Remote black box for aircraft to find out and
analyze the cause of the accident for aircraft. It
can also be used for other type of airborne vehicle
for Helicopters, Hot balloons, unmanned aerial
vehicles. Future development, the model has
limited number of sensors as in real aircraft more
number of different kinds of sensors like sound
and video etc can be interfaced. For more high
speed and remote communications in high altitude
above 25000 feet, satellite communication can be
used for high speed and reliable link.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Authors would like to acknowledge Prof. Girish
Kumar N G, assistant professor, Department of
Telecommunication Engineering, BIT, Bangalore
for assisting and providing complete guidance in
preparing this paper work.
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Fig 7. PC module
Fig 8. Black box module
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