Wireless Passenger Service Unit
| Sponsor: | Boeing |
| Corporate Contact: | Fred Mazzitelli |
| Course: | EE 403W, Fall 2002 |
| Team Members: | Troy Cessna |
| Victor Hambarsoumian | |
| Christopher Schilling | |
| J. Brandon Settles |
| The Problem: | The passenger service unit (PSU) on
a commercial aircraft allows a passenger to control local environmental
and entertainment systems while belted into a seat. Functions such as audio
channel select, volume, reading lights and attendant calls are selected
with the help of armrest-mounted dials or overhead buttons that are hard
to reach for some. Because of this fact, it would be advantageous to mount
all of these controls in the armrest. On some airplanes this is done already,
but wires must be run to connect the armrest to the overhead PSU. Because
this wiring must conform to rigid standards of design, construction, and
maintenance, costs for installing this type of system are expensive. Additionally,
in a situation where the airline wants to move seats, this wiring must
be reinstalled, increasing the maintenance costs.
The Commercial Airline Division of the Boeing Company asked us to investigate the feasibility of a wireless PSU that would make these wiring costs unnecessary. The unit would be mounted either in the armrest, or mounted in the back of the seat in front of the passenger. It would communicate with both the service control module and the entertainment module. The wireless unit must meet federal airworthiness requirements for electromagnetic interference (EMI) as dictated by the FCC and FAA. |
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| Solution: | Our design solution incorporates two Atmel products; the AT86RF211 900MHz transceiver chip and the AT90S8535 microcontroller. On the transmission side, the microcontroller is used to process user requests, build the message to be sent, and output the final data stream to the transceiver chip, which acts as a pipeline for the data. At the receiver, the microcontroller receives all data from the transceiver, filters out unwanted data (data from seats that do not correspond to that receiver's designated seat), and acts as the control processor for the associated devices. (Figure 1) |
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| Findings: | Seat ID |
| Suggestions: | Because we lack the technical expertise in some of the newest technologies, there are several options we considered that we were unable to implement within the time and budget limitations. |