The Eurofighter Typhoon IPA aircraft are fitted with telemetry instruments to support dedicated flight testing and systems development.
Under the contract, Curtiss-Wright will provide Airbus Defence and Space GmbH with data acquisition and encoding units (DAU) designed to capture critical test flight data, including the Axon and KAM-500 DAU product families, and NSW-12GTH Ethernet switch.
The Curtiss-Wright FTI technology will collect data from the Eurofighter Typhoon structure, engines, and various systems for use in the aircraft’s development and certification.
According to Curtiss-Wright, the Axon product family is one of the most advanced airborne data acquisition systems available today, offering low SWaP with the best feature set, data acquisition, and thermal performance on the market. The Axon product family builds on Curtiss-Wright’s heritage as a leading supplier of rugged reliable data acquisition for aerospace applications.
Axon’s future-proof design, using a high-speed serial backplane (1 Gbps dedicated link per module), ensures future high data rates are supported. Its low size, weight, and power (SWaP) design enables the hardware to be located in tight spaces and operate reliably without requiring bulky heatsinks. Locating data acquisition closer to the sensors can significantly decrease the installation time and cost of the instrumentation while simultaneously reducing wiring weight. Axon modules can be placed in ultra-miniature Axonite housings and located remotely, separated from the chassis by up to 10 meters. Axonites can also offer significant system cost saving in larger installations by reducing the number of DAUs required in remote locations and thus cutting down on extra chassis, controller, and power supply costs.
