In-Flight Information System

Executive Summary

Our customer is a leading smart communications and aviation electronics solutions provider in aerospace and defense industries.

Our customer wanted to develop an In-Flight Information System which could be doubled-up to be used to monitor cabin activities. While the primary function was to display movies and flight/weather information to the passengers, the system also aimed to enhance the controlling and recording of cabin/crew activities. The customer had no expertise in electronic DSP-based product design and hence engaged eInfochips in the development of the In-Flight Information System.
eInfochips was involved in Firmware development, audio/video Synchronization and Streaming with system level integration and Software Development as per requirements of DO-178B Level D for the customer’s system.

The Customer

Our customer is a leading smart communications and aviation electronics solutions provider in aerospace and defense industries. They provide various solutions to the leading companies of the globe in the aerospace and defense industries.
For more than 75 years our customer has been providing innovative communication and aviation electronics solutions to solve their toughest challenges. They are associated with the industry from the early days of flight, to the exploration of space, enabling battle space interoperability and advancing commercial aerospace.

The Challenge

Exact understanding of the system to meet the system requirements properly
Incorporating various cameras in the cabin and viewing interface for monitoring
Ensuring the transference of the video output through the Ethernet enhancing the performance of the system
Inadequate team support from the customer’s side to clarify the exact requirements of the systems
Meeting deadline - As the date of release of the system was announced by the customer, the duration for the completion of the project was short.

The Solution

Design & Development

The project was to develop a system for monitoring cabin activities in an aircraft. The system contained several video cameras in the cabin of the aircraft to record various activities .
The output of cameras went to a Video interface module. This module compressed the streams using encoder and sent over Ethernet to a special hardware containing n DSPs. Each DSP performed decoding of the n streams and sent the output to video port.

eInfochips’ team has studied the system requirements at various levels. As the system has to work inside the flight, any problem occurring during operation could create serious problem so understanding of the requirements perfectly was very important.
eInfochips has done Firmware Development of the system to make it comprehensive and compact and it had to be done in the cabin.
As the system is monitoring system, live view needs to be viewed and for this eInfochips has performed Audio and Video Synchronization and Streaming. This has enabled viewing of the area which needs to be monitored.
eInfochips is also responsible for the system level integration of the system.
There was vendor qualification and eInfochips did this as per standard which is AS9100. This has ensured the quality of the work.
eInfochips’ team has software expertise and based on that team eInfochips had developed Software as per requirements of DO-178B Level D.

Technology

Platform: DM642

The Benefit

eInfochips team took 100% ownership of the product development, and delivered the complete solution in spite of having only a few engineering at the customer site. Though our amplified offshore engagement model, eInfochips enabled the customer to complete the product development at a 50% lower project cost
By leveraging expertise in the area of firmware development and video systems, we enabled the customer to launch their product sooner than originally expected and saved about 10% of development time
Our specialized expertise in video processing systems development enabled the customer build the system with unique features and capture maximum market share