Frontier Technology, Inc. (FTI) has been awarded a Phase I Option to continue its development activities in support of Advanced Prognostic and Health Management (PHM) and Model Based Prognostic Useful Life Remaining Capabilities for Aircraft Tactical Information and Communication Systems. During the initial Phase I research, FTI demonstrated the feasibility of developing prognostic models that predict current health state, future failure and remaining useful life (RUL) for electronic systems with focus on aircraft communication, navigation and identification systems (CNI) and their components. The Phase I research was designed to:

• Maximize use of existing sensors, parameters and data sources from installed systems
• Create models of healthy systems using variances from optimum system conditions to detect incipient faults
• Identify the fault to failure progression and estimate component or system RUL
• Notify system users of fault detection, RUL and suggested action/areas of investigation

The Phase I research successfully applied FTI’s NormNet™ anomaly detection and fault isolation technology to identify precursors of future failures in aircraft electronic systems, including power supplies, inertial navigation systems and GPS receivers. Based on FTI’s patented Pattern Recognition of Health technology, NormNet™ has been designed to meet the dynamic and rapidly-changing environments present in military aircraft. Using existing and available information about the vehicle, NormNet™ creates a statistical model of normal operations – a healthy system. Potential problems are identified by small variances from expected system behavior that are also precursors of future failures. NormNet™ has the ability to process input from multiple sensors, sampled at rates as fast as 250 milliseconds, while detecting variances from expected performance as small as 2%. The application of PHM technology to electronic systems is projected to result in increased vehicle availability, improved reliability and reduced cost of operations by reporting early detection of degrading vehicle performance.

NormNet™ technology has been applied to systems as diverse as aircraft engines, rotorcraft, oil platform marine engines and compressors, military wheeled vehicles, and water quality surveillance. In each case, NormNet™ has accurately identified potential failures well in advance of other monitoring or diagnostic technologies. In the past, award of a Phase I Option has been an indicator of future award of a Phase II contract, which in this case, would result in the development of prototype technology to be incorporated into the JSF autonomic logistics system.