Autonomous Deployment of the UAVSAR Radar Instrument

Kenneth Vines Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA. 91109 kenneth.w.vines@jpl.nasa.gov AbstractThe UAVSAR program was formed to provide repeat pass radar interferometry on an uninhabited aircraft platform.12 The UAVSAR imaging radar system is housed in an external unpressurized pod that may be attached to an Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle (UAV), although initial flight tests were performed aboard a Gulfstream-III aircraft with flight test personnel on-board. Since the radar science missions are to be eventually flown without an on-board operator, all data collection must be performed autonomously from take-off to landing. The Automatic Radar Controller (ARC) is the main instrument flight computer responsible for a myriad of tasks, including commanding the radar configuration and monitoring the aircraft flight path to search for data collection waypoints provided by an on-board flight plan. The pod environment and various hardware units are monitored during the mission to assure the radar instrument remains within an operable range. The ARC communicates with a Radar Operator Workstation (ROW) to receive updated real-time operational commands and to download up-to-date hardware status and telemetry. The ROW provides operator displays for monitoring the health of the radar system and also displays sampled radar waveforms in time and frequency domains. The aircraft location is provided by the on-board GPS/INU and downloaded by the ARC for plotting the current location onto Google maps using software developed at JPL. The UAVSAR platform has been flown throughout most of California and has recently completed successful deployments to Greenland and the Aleutian Islands. A nearly identical UAVSAR pod will be attached to a Global Hawk UAV platform in early 2010 for uninhabited operational flight tests. An additional pod containing another L-band antenna and GPS/INU unit will also be attached to the Global Hawk platform providing dual Lband data collection capability. The command and communication implementation for Global Hawk has been modified from the original GIII test
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Roger Chao Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA. 91109 roger.y.chao@jpl.nasa.gov platform. During flight tests on the GIII the Radar Operator Workstation (ROW) was on-board with the test team. For the Global Hawk flight tests, the Radar Operator Workstation will be in the Global Hawk Operations Center located at the Dryden Flight Research facility. Communications to the ARC will utilize a relatively low speed Iridium satellite communications link. This paper will describe the functionality of the UAVSAR Global Hawk radar instrument flight and ground systems. We will also discuss fault detection and recovery options provided by these systems. We will describe the capabilities of monitoring and controlling the radar instrument during flight from the Global Hawk operations facility and describe the operational timeline for a typical science mission. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................ 1 2. GROUND SYSTEM OPERATION ........................................ 2 3. AUTONOMOUS OPERATIONAL CONTROL ....................... 4 4. UAVSAR FLIGHT TESTS ................................................ 4 5. CONCLUSIONS .................................................................. 7 REFERENCES........................................................................ 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................ 7 BIOGRAPHY ......................................................................... 7

1. INTRODUCTION
The UAVSAR flight computer is referred to as the Automatic Radar Controller (ARC). The ARC is responsible for controlling the radar instrument, executing the mission timeline and monitoring overall system health. The flight computer resides in the Digital VME chassis located within the pod containing the entire radar instrument. Although the ARC is capable of flying an entire mission autonomously, there is an operator interface allowing commands to be sent to override the executing timeline. The Radar Operator Workstation (ROW) provides a graphical user interface containing control commands to manually operate the UAVSAR instrument. Status and telemetry information are displayed on the ROW console during flight. The ROW software executes on a Linux-based laptop computer. 1

U.S. Government work not protected by U.S. copyright IEEEAC paper#1558, Version 1, Updated 2009:10:27

Mission Timeline In preparation for each flight mission, a flight plan file and adaptation file is copied to the flash file system on the single board computer. The flight plan file consists of a series of flight lines each containing data take waypoints specifying the aircraft location for the initiation and completion of radar operation. The adaptation file specifies default information for temperature limits and modes of ARC operation. These files are generated by the UAVSAR flight planning system located at JPL. When power is applied to the digital chassis, the ARC boots its operating system and initiates the flight software. The ARC flight software reads the configuration files from the flash file system and initiates the mission timeline. A system level self-test is performed before take-off and again after reaching a predefined altitude. Aircraft location is monitored by the ARCs flight path tracking algorithm. The ARC has a 1553B-bus interface to an Embedded GPS/INU (EGI) to obtain current aircraft location and attitude information. The ARC determines when to configure the radar for the data take and initiate radar timing based on start and stop waypoint parameters from the flight plan and the current aircraft location. As shown in Figure 1, when the ARC is in Automatic mode the flight path tracker algorithm initially looks for the planned flight altitude to be reached, searches for the first pre-data-take waypoint location within the flight line then monitors the flight path as each waypoint is encountered. Radar timing begins at a start-data-take waypoint and ends at a stop-data-take waypoint. Each flight line specified by the flight plan is executed sequentially. As the mission timeline progresses the ARC determines when to create new archive file sets and new science data files. The ARC sends commands to the Data Acquisition Controller (DAC) via Ethernet and VME bus. The DAC is a single board computer located in the digital chassis that is responsible for configuring the JBOD (just a bunch of disks) disk array then collecting and formatting digitized range line data for archive to the JBOD. In response to commands from the ARC, the DAC configures the JBOD disk array for collecting science and telemetry data. The DAC also receives science data header information from the ARC and attaches a header to each range line. During flight plan execution, the ROW operator may command the ARC to jump to a specific data take within the flight plan, abort the flight plan entirely or start another flight plan file located on the flash file system. Upon reaching the end of flight plan execution the ARC continues to monitor aircraft location and temperatures within the pod. The ROW operator may command the ARC to run another flight plan if desired. When the aircraft reaches the landing preparation altitude specified by the adaptation file, the 2

ARC then transitions to a power state to safe the JBOD for landing. The ARC continues to monitor temperatures and aircraft location throughout the landing until the ROW operator commands power down of the entire pod.

Figure 1 Flight Path State Transition Diagram

2. GROUND SYSTEM OPERATION

The Radar Operator Workstation (ROW) is the primary user interface to the UAVSAR system. It consists of a command interface, telemetry display interface, range line display and hardware status display. The telemetry display easily conveys to the UAVSAR operator any critical system errors that need immediate attention. The command interface enables the UAVSAR operator to modify the ARCs automatic timeline during flight and allows the operator to take complete control of the UAVSAR system by aborting the ARC automatic mode timeline and commanding manual mode operations, if needed. The ROW consists of a Linux based laptop computer connected to a remote display. The interface to the ARC software running on the target single board computer is via TCP Ethernet on the G-III and UDP Ethernet for the Global Hawk implementation. The UAVSAR ground support system also provides the operator a real-time display map of the current aircraft

location. Aircraft status telemetry containing the latitude, longitude and altitude is input to a software module that allows the updated aircraft location to be displayed by Google Earth software. Radar Operations aboard the Gulfstream-III The ROW was onboard the G-III during initial flight tests of the UAVSAR system and continues to be used onboard during the current science mission deployments. The relatively high data rate provided by a cabled Ethernet connection to the ARC enables sampled range lines to be displayed at 1Hz rate during SAR data collection. The Linux operating system running on the Radar Operator Workstation provides an easy method to upload flight plans and other ancillary files to the ARC single board computer flash memory file system via file transfer protocol (ftp) utility during flight if required. Global Hawk Operations Center For Global Hawk UAVSAR operation the ROW will be located at the Global Hawk Operations Center (GHOC) at the Dryden Flight Research Center. This facility is divided into two sections, the Flight Operations Room containing the control consoles for Global Hawk flight control personnel and the Payload Operations Room for instrument payload operations (Figure 2).

information is displayed in text windows with selectable engineering units or decimal values. The waveforms, headers and status are archived for later playback on the ROW. During playback, the operator may step through the archive or playback at the real-time rate. The command window provides the ability for the operator to send commands for either Automatic or Manual modes of operation. Automatic mode commands enable the Radar Operator to abort a running SAR data collection (or data take) and select another data take to be started from the currently running flight plan. The operator may suspend the current flight plan and resume at a later time. Alternatively, the operator may abort the current flight plan and start another flight plan located onboard the instrument.

Figure 3 Radar Operator Workstation Display During flight tests we often would run the instrument in Manual mode. This provides the ROW operator complete control of the UAVSAR instrument. For example, the ROW manual mode command interface enables control of the pods fans, louvers and heaters. These commands override the normal PDU control of these devices. The operator may also change the power state of the system, for example to enable or disable power to the antenna, RF system, Digital System JBOD disk array and Embedded GPS_INU. A nominal manual mode operational scenario would begin by setting the radar configuration parameters such as the pulse repetition interval, data window position, polarization, receiver attenuations and waveform selection. The operator may optionally select the science data file name to be recorded on the JBOD. These configuration parameters are sent to the ARC, which then configures the Command and Timing Unit (CTU), Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG) and the DAC. The ROW operator then commands timing to be initiated. After the desired amount of data is collected, the operator commands radar timing to stop and closes the science file on the JBOD. Alternatively the operator can set 3

Figure 2 Global Hawk Operations Facility Diagram The ROW will interface to the communications system located at Dryden that provides data transmission via Iridium satellite link. The ROW functionality remains completely unchanged compared with the direct connection to the ARC via cabled Ethernet, except for some data rate restrictions due to the lower transmission rate over the Iridium satellite and a software update for UDP Ethernet protocol to interface to the Dryden communications electronics. Radar Operator Workstation Functionality The Radar Operator Workstation provides graphical user interfaces for commanding the UAVSAR instrument and for displaying real-time telemetry, status and sampled range line waveforms. The range line display window plots range line data in the time and frequency domains (Figure 3). Range line header information along with hardware status

up a burst command to run timing for a specified number of PRI intervals.

3. AUTONOMOUS OPERATIONAL CONTROL

The ARC flight software is required to handle the entire operational timeline from when the digital chassis is powered on to when its powered down. Operations performed during the time when the ARC is powered off are executed by the PDU firmware. These include power control of the EGI and DGPS, and adjusting pod temperature and power levels. The PDU has the ultimate control of system operations since it able to shut down power to parts of the system when a critical fault is detected. It is responsible for determining if and when it is safe to power on the digital chassis containing the ARC. Once the ARC is powered and the flight software loaded, the ARC flight software controls the higher-level power states, for example to power up the JBOD disk array and antenna. The ARC flight software executes a timeline state machine. As described in Section 1, the ARC autonomously determines when to transition power states, begin flight path tracking and when to collect SAR data. These events are determined by aircraft altitude and location obtained by the Embedded GPS/INU. Although these events are timetagged within the log information, the ARC timeline state machine is not driven by temporal events, but entirely by locale. A series of system and calibration tests are autonomously performed while the aircraft is on the ground before take-off and again after it is airborne. The transmitters are not enabled for the ground test series for safety considerations. Fault Recovery During UAVSAR flight tests on the G-III platform, we were able to verify some of the fault recovery mechanisms implemented in the ARC flight software. These include software watchdog timers, timeline checkmarks, overtemperature faults and flight tube location errors. For example the ARC utilizes a watchdog timer mechanism provided by the single board computers board support package (BSP). If the watchdog is not reset in the required time interval the ARC is automatically reset. During timeline operation, as the timeline state variable is updated, its value is written to the on-board flash file system. In the case of an unexpected reset, the ARC reads the stored state value and attempts to continue the timeline from that state. If the aircraft is not able to fly within the flight tube diameter (as specified by an adaptation parameter) for a period of time, the flight path tracking algorithm will discontinue the current flight line and attempt tracking for the next one specified in the flight plan. 4

As mentioned earlier, the ARC monitors temperatures for the various hardware units within the pod. Yellow limit violations (as specified per sensor in the adaptation file) are reported in telemetry. Red limit violations cause data take operations to be suspended and the ARC transitions the radar system to a lower operational power state. It is possible the ARC may transition to a power state that precludes the ARC itself if the digital chassis has a critical temperature violation. Otherwise, the ARC remains active and in an idle operational state until commanded by the ROW operator for further operations. For the Global Hawk integration effort, the UAVSAR instrument development team will add several additional fault detection mechanisms. These include hardware watchdogs for the PDU and CTU units and additional hardware status information that is periodically sent to the ground station. We are also improving the communications integrity on the ARC to handle unexpected dropouts with minimal mission degradation. For example, on-going SAR data take operations will complete autonomously during a communications drop out. After completion, the ARC will transition to an idle state until communications with the ROW can be re-established.

4. UAVSAR FLIGHT TESTS

Flight Tests and Mission Deployments on the G-III Initial flight tests were performed on a Gulfstream III aircraft with the SAR instrument located in a 1.6 meter pod attached under the fuselage. However the pod is designed to be attached to a number of Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles, including the Northrup Grumman Global Hawk. Flight tests on the G-III were nominally flown at altitudes ranging from 33,000 to 41,000 feet and a nominal ground speed of approximately 400 knots. SAR data collection on the Global Hawk may potentially be performed at altitudes up to 60,000 ft.

Figure 4 UAVSAR Pod During I&T at JPL The UAVSAR pod is unpressurized, requiring forced airflow and heaters for temperature control and to prevent condensation (Figure 4). The pod provides mounting locations for the Digital and RF electronics, Embedded GPS and INU (EGI), Differential GPS, Power Distribution Unit (PDU), JBOD disk storage array, battery and the SAR Lband antenna. The JBOD storage system is capable of recording 1.8 Terra-bytes (TB) of science and ancillary data. During early flight tests on the G-III we found the JBOD disk array was not operating properly caused by vibration due to insufficient vibration damping in the digital chassis JBOD mounting. The JBOD was relocated to inside the cabin for all the remaining test flights. Initial test flights were flown out of the Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air force Base located in the Mohave Desert in California (Figure 5). Manual and Automatic modes of operation were tested during these initial test flights. We also validated the electronic beam steering capability of the UAVSAR system. The aircrafts yaw angle changes during SAR data collection mostly due to minor turbulence and motion within the flight tube. This can cause distortion in the SAR image if not corrected. The beam angle corrections are calculated by the ARC based on the attitude information provided by the EGI at a 50Hz rate. The ARC also calculates Pulse Repetition Interval (PRI) updates depending on ground speed at 1Hz intervals. The ARC sends the updated beam angle and PRI value to the Command and Timing Unit during a data take at the range line pulse rate of up to 1KHz. For most of the early test flights we traversed a race track oval flight path covering the Mojave Desert and the Los Angeles basin. Although the purpose of the early UAVSAR missions were meant to verify the operation of the radar system, some useful science data were collected over the Salton Sea and Mount St. Helens.

Figure 5 UAVSAR on G-III Platform The G-III platform has since been deployed to Greenland, Iceland, the Aleutian Islands and locations across the continental United States. Lessons Learned Prior to our initial flight tests of the UAVSAR system, we ran simulated test flights during Integration and Test at JPL. An EGI simulator was developed in place of the actual EGI that provided altitude, ground speed, latitude and longitude information to the ARC over the 1553B bus at fixed time intervals. A flight plan corresponding to the simulated flight path was provided to the ARC. This allowed us to test the flight software timeline from take-off to landing in a lab environment. Although this was an invaluable tool for validating flight software, we still ran into some problems during actual flight tests. For example, the window for acceptable altitude and ground speed constraints for data take operation were unexpectedly set too restrictive for actual flight operation. These adaptation parameters had to be updated during flight. Fortunately we had installed a development workstation on the G-III and were able to modify the parameters and reload them to the ARC. The workstation also enabled us to change flight software builds in flight in the instances where problems were encountered. Autonomous Deployment for Global Hawk Operation Flight tests for the Global Hawk UAVSAR platform will require the ARC to be capable of operating completely autonomously. Although it will be possible for the ROW operator to command the UAVSAR instrument from the Global Hawk Operations Center at Dryden, any faults occurring on the flight platform must be resolved autonomously on-board. For the initial G-III platform flight tests, we decided to fly the Unix based test-bed workstation containing the vxWorks O/S image, Tornado development system and ARC flight software image. The Tornado environment enables some real-time debugging capability that was useful during flight tests as mentioned previously. The Radar 5

Operator Workstation was also flown on board the G-III enabling the operator to command the radar using the high speed Ethernet interface to the ARC. For Global Hawk flight tests, the vxWorks image and ARC flight software will be loaded onto the user flash memory of the single board computer enabling the flight software to be started automatically when the flight computer is powered on. The DAC software will also be loaded onto its boot ROM, rather than loading from the development workstation. It is desirable to have the capability to upload new flight software builds and flight plans during flight of the Global Hawk UAVSAR. This becomes more critical when problems arise during extended duration missions when the platform may be deployed long distances from its home base. We plan to add the ability to upload these items to the UAVSAR instrument via the Global Hawk Operations Facility during flight. The uploaded files will be placed in the ARC flash memory. The ROW may command a newly uploaded flight plan file to be executed. An uploaded flight software image will replace the currently executing image upon a commanded ARC reset. Although it would be preferable to patch individual components of the ARC software, the existing software architecture does not easily lend itself to component level replacement. However, the ability to upload new software image files containing any number of component modifications can be implemented without much difficulty and is a reasonable implementation for a deployment of 24 hours duration. The Radar Operator Workstation (ROW) will be located at the Global Hawk Operations Center at Dryden as described in Section 2. Replacing the cabled Ethernet TCP connection used on the G-III will be an Iridium satellite communications link to the Dryden Global Hawk Operations facility. The interface to the ARC and ROW for Global Hawk operation has been modified to use the UDP protocol for Ethernet. We have validated this communications link during a recent G-III deployment to the east coast of the United States, where real-time manual mode commands from a ground based Radar Operator Workstation at JPL were uplinked to the airborne UAVSAR instrument via the Dryden flight research center. The ground based ROW successfully commanded radar timing initiation and science data collection. Telemetry and status information was down-linked to the ground based ROW where the ROW operator was able to verify commands were successfully executed, in addition to verification from an on-board flight test engineer. Figure 6 Global Hawk Platform for UAVSAR Two pods will be attached at mount points located under each wing of the Global Hawk (Figure 6). It is desired to fly a second L-band antenna as part of the UAVSAR instrument. The second pod will contain only a L-band antenna, differential GPS and an Embedded GPS/INU. The existing ARC single board computer located in the original pod will control both EGIs, each via a separate 1553B bus interface. The existing CTU and AWG in the original pod will command the antennas in both pods. The existing DAC single board computer located in the original pod will configure multiple JBOD units that will be located in a pressurized compartment within the Global Hawk fuselage. For the UAVSAR Global Hawk implementation, the DAC will collect from up to 4 channels of SAR data, where two channels are assigned per antenna. The DAC will be capable of recording from either one or both antennas. It is a goal to implement long-baseline collection in two-antenna ping-pong operation, where only data from the receivers connected to the transmitting antenna is collected. Maximum science and ancillary storage for Global Hawk operation will be 5.4 Terabytes providing enough storage for the maximum mission duration of 24 hours. Potential Future Implementations of SAR Systems on a UAV As a precursor to UAVSAR, the GeoSAR airborne imaging radar instrument was flown on a Gulfstream-II aircraft. Its electronics nearly filled the cabin of the G-II. SAR data was recorded onto tape, requiring an on-board operator to change tapes after each flight line. With the evolution of miniaturized storage systems and electronics with yet more powerful processors the UAVSAR team was able to successfully develop a significantly smaller instrument package and yet more robust imaging radar instrument. As technology continues to progress as Moores Law predicts, we will be able to continue reducing the mass and volume of the supporting electronics for future radar systems. JPL has developed a compact PCI based test-bed version of the UAVSAR digital electronics. The cPCI chassis and the cPCI implementation of the Command and Timing Unit (CTU) and Automatic Waveform Generator (AWG) along with cPCI versions of the ARC, DAC and ADCs enables power, mass and volume reduction over the current VME based implementation. UAVSAR flight software was 6

modified to control the newly developed electronics in the cPCI digital chassis. The test-bed single board computer is running version 6.4 of the Wind River vxWorks operating system. This version of vxWorks offers memory protection between software tasks, whereas the O/S version running on the UAVSAR platform does not. A successful demonstration of these system upgrades will prove the functionality of UAVSAR can be obtained while enabling future implementation of aircraft and space radar avionics to be smaller and more robust. As an example of potential application for miniaturized SAR platforms, several independent instrument platforms could be developed to fly in tandem aboard micro-satellites (<100kg) or miniaturized uninhabited aerial vehicles. These instruments could be operated independently or synchronously provided that cluster flight algorithms and GPS are available for location and radar timing synchronization. An initial implementation could potentially include the use of the G-III and Global hawk platforms for simultaneous multi-baseline experiments.

REFERENCES
[1] Paul Rosen, Scott Hensley, UAVSAR: A New NASA Airborne SAR System for Science and Technology Research, IEEE Conference on Radar, 2007. [2] Kevin Wheeler, Scott Hensley, Yunling Lou, An L-Band SAR for Repeat Pass Interferometry for Deformation Measurements, IEEE MTT International Microwave Symposium Digest, Volume 3, 2005. [3] UAVSAR web site http://uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov/

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to acknowledge the contributions by Kouji Nishimoto, Don Meyer, Tim Miller, Ron Muellerschoen and Bruce Chapman during UAVSAR flight and ground software development. Thanks to Muh-Wang Yang and Gary Hamilton for developing the software inherited from the GeoSAR project. Also thanks to Kevin Wheeler, Yunling Lou, Scott Hensley, Wafa Aldiwan and Dennis Flower for their support in managing this endeavor. The research described in this paper was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

5. CONCLUSIONS
UAVSAR has already proven to be successful with deployments around the world. Now the integration onto the Global Hawk flight platform will provide 24-hour coverage at extremely high altitudes. The dual-pod configuration will enable multi-baseline SAR data collection from a UAV. Successful implementation of electronic beam steering on UAVSAR provides a constant beam angle required for high quality interferometric image formation. Remote operation of the Global Hawk UAV via the Radar Operator Workstation at the Global Hawk Operation Facility provides real-time knowledge of mission status and robust control of the radar instrument. Implementations of eversmaller SAR systems will enable miniaturized flight platforms to be utilized.

BIOGRAPHY
Kenneth Vines is a senior software engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. He has developed and/or led development and testing of flight software for UAVSAR, GeoSAR, Cassini Radar and the Shuttle Imaging Radar programs. He has developed the System Interface Assembly (SIA) and DMA device drivers for the X2000 RAD750 flight computer at JPL. He has a BS and MS degree in Computer Science from California Polytechnic State University Pomona. Roger Chao is an electronic engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. He has developed the Radar Operator Workstation and is one of the main radar operators aboard G-III for the UAVSAR program. He is currently working on system engineering for Global Hawk implementation. He has a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from California Polytechnic State University Pomona.