Upgrading Flight Test Data Acquisition Systems with New Capabilities While Maintaining Backwards Compatibility

Many flight test instrumentation (FTI) users have a long history of using FTI data acquisition systems and have made significant investments in these systems. These investments can sometimes be an impediment to fielding new technologies. To address this need to maintain backward compatibility while exploiting new technologies, Curtiss-Wright has developed a next-generation MnACQ-2700 data acquisition system that includes a new high data rate secondary backplane. This new backplane allows for the addition of a high data rate module while maintaining backwards compatibility with the large deployed base of modules that use the standard backplane. This paper will explore the design of the high data rate secondary backplane and how it interacts with data that is acquired from the standard backplane.