IoT in the Sky
The Internet of Things (IoT) offers the potential to create new business models, streamline business processes and reduce costs in industries ranging from bioresearch to petroleum production.
One industry ripe for IoT-driven improvement is aviation. A McKinsey Global Institute report cites the potential impact of IoT in the sky as being anywhere from $900 million to $2.3 billion by 2025.
It won't be easy. The aviation industry uses a complex patchwork of systems, thanks to a large and varied group of stakeholders. The airlines own the aircraft and ground maintenance; communications systems are owned and operated by telecom and satellite providers; the engines themselves may be owned by the manufacturer and leased out to the airlines; and flight operations are controlled by the likes of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and its European counterpart EuroControl. This multi-tenant set-up makes it tough to deliver the comprehensive services demanded by IoT technologies.
A major piece of the puzzle is Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), a system that uses GPS signals to determine the location of aircraft. There are many land-based ADS-B systems in North American, Europe and metropolitan areas around the world. But there is no coverage in remote areas such as over oceans, mountains, deserts or the poles.
These gaps in coverage explain why a plane such as Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 can seemingly ;disappear from the face of the earth. A plan is in place, however, to erect scores of satellites around the globe which will be able to pinpoint airline locations everywhere.
Establishing an IoT Infrastructure
“Ground-based ADS-B stations give limited coverage, but soon our coverage will be 100 percent,” said Chip Downing, senior director of Aerospace Defense at Wind River, a subsidiary of Intel which has an operating system that is used by many airlines.
This satellite network is being installed by Aireon, which is part of satellite communications provider Iridium. According to Iridium, airline fuel savings alone could amount to $8 billion by 2030.
Savings will result from combining ADS-B data with engine IoT information, weather data and information from all other planes in the vicinity, then analyzing the data in near real time to make better decisions about altitudes, route planning, velocity, the influence of wind and maintenance schedules.
“This means you don't need a manned controller looking at a radar screen to keep flights separated,” said Downing. “As a result, planes can fly closer while maintaining safety.”
Many ADS-B devices run on top of a Wind River operating system known as VxWorks. An edge management system known as Wind River Helix Device Cloud collects data from sensors or devices and puts it into the cloud for analysis.
Speedier Data Analysis
Older systems used to gather the data, process it, store it and then send it elsewhere for analysis, Downing explained. That is too slow for the needs of IoT. Now data is siphoned off at the point it is generated, he said. One feed goes on the normal route and the other goes directly to the point of analysis in the cloud.
“To be accurate and responsive enough, you need to go directly to the cloud and not just via control systems,” Downing said. “That way, we are able to send the control system alerts or guidance in near-real time.”
Such systems make it possible to analyze data mid-flight rather than waiting to download it all upon landing. This allows engineers to tune engines more precisely, alter flight paths to avoid bad weather, take advantage of better winds on a slightly different course and, perhaps most importantly, set up maintenance actions on the ground so that crews are ready well in advance of the plane's arrival.
IoT Platforms
Wind River and Intel are putting the pieces together for a platform that will underpin other systems. Engine supplier GE Aviation and airline OEM Boeing, for example, can plug their various applications on top of Wind River VxWorks.
“Many vendors can add new capabilities and create a richer aviation environment using IoT data,” Downing said.
Another company lining up its IoT platform for use in aviation is Pivotal with its Big Data Suite. Its approach, said Raghvender Arni, senior director, Platform Strategy at Pivotal, is to provide the analytics capabilities and platform, and let airline specialists build what they need on top of it. It works with the likes of GE Aviation and Honeywell to help them deal with up to 1 terabyte of data per flight.
“That number is growing all the time as GE continues to add more sensors to its jet engines,” said Arni. “The company wants a finer grained view of what is happening inside its engine.”
Transmitting, storing and digesting that amount of data with so many planes landing every minute of every day can be daunting. One current approach to dealing with bandwidth limitations is to perform some lightweight data processing and analysis mid-flight and upload the bulk of the data into a Hadoop data store once the plane lands. The tradeoff between the desire to send the data and the cost of doing so is throttling down an all-out IoT aviation data torrent.
Drew Robb is a writer who has been writing about IT, engineering, and other topics. Originating from Scotland, he currently resides in Florida. Highly skilled in rapid prototyping innovative and reliable systems. He has been an editor and professional writer full-time for more than 20 years. He works as a freelancer at Enterprise Apps Today, CIO Insight and other IT publications. He is also an editor-in chief of an international engineering journal. He enjoys solving data problems and learning abstractions that will allow for better infrastructure.
