Redundant DAQ Systems for Signal Monitoring
The reliability of thousands of mechanical components and subsystems are the main factor for the success of a rocket launch. To ensure reliability, a redundant DAQ system is monitoring the components during the countdown before the take-off phase.
This is a tough and challenging process due to several reasons. On one hand, engineers must place the signal conditioning and data acquisition system close to the device under test. On the other hand, it is important to protect the systems from damage, as a rocket launch unleashes enormous physical forces.
For safety reasons, it is necessary to split up the signal conditioning and the data acquisition systems. To ensure redundancy, engineers split them into several individual and redundant subsystems in several locally distributed bunkers. This helps to avoid data loss in case any unexpected and safety-critical event occurs.
Due to safety reasons, engineers are not allowed to enter these bunkers during the countdown. Therefore, it is necessary to transfer data to the control room and control the data acquisition system from there.
Solution for redundant DAQ
To solve the complex situation during the rocket launch countdown, DEWETRON’s solution for redundant DAQ is to split the system into three different parts. The whole system consists of a 256 channel signal conditioning system and two 256 channel data acquisition systems for redundant data storing. Those systems send data to the data monitoring and control system. The control system consists of four independent workstations located in the control room.
The advantage of this solution are redundancy and modularity. The signal conditioning system forwards the signal to two independent data acquisition systems for data recording. As a result, data will not be lost and is still available on the second mainframe in the unlikely case that one of the two independent systems fails.
Do you want to know more about redundant data acquisition systems for signal monitoring during rocket launches? Rafael, our application engineer, wrote an exciting whitepaper dealing with this topic. He describes the necessary steps to face the upcoming challenges when monitoring mechanical components during a rocket launch countdown.
