Vehicle Data Acquisition and Telemetry

Data Acquisition (DAQ) and Telemetry are part of the winning formula of any race team or vehicle manufacturer. It is vital to the development phase of a vehicle, so that designs can be validated and tunable parameters adjusted to increase performance and efficiency. Existing DAQ systems fail as they are of universal application type and turn out to be extremely costly and power hungry. Also, the lack of filtering stages is an issue for sensor data coming from a moving vehicle. The system discussed in this paper was designed specifically for automotive application, taking into account the size, cost and performance, while also taking care of the noise factor by including digital filters. The system was found to be 2.2 times more cost effective than current modules, with a data rate of 9600Hz and 10 bit resolution for DAQ and the telemetry system working at a serial data baud rate of 9600 transmitted wirelessly through a ZigBee network.