AIMMS-20
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Product Overview
Whether you are spraying pesticides or fighting forest fires, local weather conditions aloft can tremendously affect the cost, efficacy, and the safety of what you do. The ability to accurately define and forecast such local conditions depends on the quality of available upper-air data. Because of this, local weather measurements are key; and, using operational aircraft resources to do the job makes the process cost efficient. The AIMMS-20 is a weather-sensing solution for measuring mission-critical data on board existing aircraft, which is then able to deliver that data either directly to the cockpit, or to ground personnel using satellite telemetry.
Airborne measurement is complicated by the high speed of motion through the air. Wind measurement is an especially challenging problem as the aircraft is moving many times faster than the wind to be resolved. Very precise measurements of air-motion, aircraft velocity and orientation are thus required to derive wind speed with an accuracy of 1 knot (0.5 m/s). This unparalleled precision has been made possible by fusing advanced GPS and inertial technologies together with three-dimensional airflow measurement and advanced correction for aerodynamic errors.
Benefits
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Provides real-time measurement of mean winds and RMS turbulence metrics
Provides temperature, humidity and pressure data
Includes output of high-precision aircraft attitude data (bank angle, pitch angle and true heading)
A fully integrated package with all components necessary for stand-alone operation to minimize the cost and complexities pertaining to installation and FAA certification
Full support for aerodynamic calibration to minimize the time and effort necessary to analyze flight-calibration data
Unrivalled price-performance ratio for airborne meteorological observation
Easily integrated with other data systems, or it operates independently using an internal data log
Applications
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Aerial application of pesticides
Wind data critical for monitoring off-target drift potential
Spray optimization (flight line offsets taking wind drift into account to improve targeting of spray)
Weather observation in support of wildland fire operations
Fire weather forecasting
Prescribed burn management
Fire aviation support
Atmospheric observation for scientific research
Air quality
Atmospheric dynamics research
Cloud physics
Climate change (greenhouse gas fluxes, transport and chemistry)
Airborne observation
Wind data for analysis of LIDAR power line survey data
Environmental parameters to aid analysis of remote sensing data
Pollution transport studies
Components
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The AIMMS-20 is modular in design wherein each module is responsible for handling a major part of the airborne meteorological measurement problem. These modular components are physically interconnected using a single network cable over which a Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol is implemented to share data.
Air-Data Probe (ADP)
temperature, humidity, barometric pressure
three-dimensional aircraft-relative airflow vector
3-axis acceleration and magnetic field measurement
Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)
three-axis acceleration (accelerometer triad)
three-axis angular rates (rate gyro triad)
Dual processor Global Positioning System module (GPS)
dual antenna inputs for differential carrier-phase measurement
phase data used for precise (0.1 deg.) attitude measurement
three-dimensional position and velocity
Central Processing Module (CPM)
Inertial, GPS phase/position/velocity data converted into precise attitude data (roll, pitch, true heading)
Air-data corrected for dynamic / aerodynamic effects
Final reduction of air-motion, attitude, velocity data into corrects winds, temperature and humidity
Real-time RS-232 broadcast output for simple external integration
Internal data log for independent operation and recording