5 ms·
Interesting how radiation issues could be solved in software.
by piker 11mo ago
Interesting how radiation issues could be solved in software.
- lazide 11mo agoFinally turning on the ECC RAM option?
- mandeepj 11mo agoMaybe there's a range that requires a change? Now imagine, if it was over the air update, then maybe there would be no disruption?
- matja 11mo agoPerhaps it's improving the checksum algorithm on network packets, or even ... adding one.
- amelius 11mo agoMakes you wonder, if/how _passengers_ are directly protected against the radiation
- fragmede 11mo agoThey're not. Excessive high altitude flight increases your chance of developing melanoma. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9447865/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9447865/
- amelius 11mo agoOk, I'll take an aisle seat more often now instead of a window seat.
- userbinator 11mo agoUnless you fly as often as pilots and other onboard staff, it's unlikely to be significant.
- londons_explore 11mo agoIf flying were invented today, I bet it wouldn't be allowed due to the radiation. It's more than many medical procedures which guidelines say to only do when the medical benefits outweigh the radiation risk.
- burnt-resistor 11mo agoPassengers flying now and then, it's not a big deal, but aircrews are at increased risk of cancer.
- AnimalMuppet 11mo agos/solved/mitigated/
- stackghost 11mo agoIt comes down to voting algorithms and memory persistence. Sometimes there is a threshold before data are "voted out". I don't work on the A320 but solar radiation is a well-known issue in avionics, generally speaking. Edit: deleted some speculation
- SoftTalker 11mo agoAgreed, I expected additional shielding or something physical like that.
- tonyarkles 11mo agoTo give you a bit of insight, around the same timeframe (late October/early November) I directly observed two high-accuracy RTK GPS receivers reporting high accuracy (2cm), full 3D DGPS lock with carrier phase, and positions wandering within about a 5m circle horizontally. The altitude was staying pretty consistent (within about 1m, which was outside of the reported accuracy but not bad) until there was a sudden 60m altitude shift. This was all while they were sitting static on the ground, verified both by the crew and the accelerometer, gyro, and RADAR data. There wasn’t a software fix per se, but we were able to quickly add a check to verify that the Kalman Filter’s position variance estimate was on the same order of magnitude as the accuracy level that the receivers were reporting and put a big red warning up. This wasn’t a flight-critical system, but it is the first time we’d ever seen that behaviour from those receivers and we’ve used them for 5 years.
- RossBencina 11mo agoNot my area at all, but I'm extremely surprised that a fly-by-wire system would use GPS as an altitude reference. Is that really the case?
- adhambadr 11mo agoIt’s a combined signal system, using pressure based sensors + gps.
- ape4 11mo agoAnd inertial guidance too?
- adhambadr 11mo agoI don’t know what airbus uses I only looked into the schematics of commercial avionics like Garmin. I doubted though IMU drift and calibration introduce more error than they can provide in useful signal, old school pressure sensors + gps adjusted manually or automatically for regional pressure settings (pilots get these numbers through radio when they enter a new pressure area) is accurate enough (~1m). I’ll let a real avionics engineer correct me here, I’d be curious if that signal is worth the hassle + I can imagine such tiny SMD sensors ARE the biggest victims of radiation hallucination.
- nutjob2 11mo agoAbout one third require hardware mods.