Hypersonic Vehicle Air Data Collection: Assessing the Relationship Between the Sensor and Guidance and Control System Requirements

The relationship between the air data system and the flight guidance and control (G&C) system design requirements which assure proper trajectory management of air-breathing hypersonic vehicles is explored. The type and precision of on-board state measurements dictated by G&C operations are characterized. Candidate procedures for their measurement are examined including assessment of likely sensor technologies as well as models required to extract desired environment states from actual sensor measurements. Data integration schemes which allow efficient merging of overlapping information from dissimilar sensors (e.g. inertial devices and direct environment measurements) are proposed, and the implications that the resulting state measurement processes will have on G&C avionics and software architecture are considered.