All pilots need to know what the weather is doing when arriving or departing
from an airport. From the cloud base and wind direction, to runway
visibility and ground temperature, the prevailing conditions may
affect the operation of modern jet aircraft. Real-time access to
accurate weather information is vital.
Muir Matheson Ltd has been in the aviation weather
business since 1982 when it developed its first system for Leeds-Bradford
airport. The company is now the UK's leading supplier of airport
weather systems with fully integrated products that incorporate weather
observing, data handling, and forecast information. Its systems are
installed at major UK airports such as London Heathrow, Manchester,
Edinburgh, and Birmingham as well as Police air support units throughout
the UK.
The key to such systems is a constant flow of data.
Air traffic control has to give pilots an accurate report of prevailing
conditions and vital readings for height calculations such as barometric
pressure. Muir Matheson's Semi-Automatic Met Observation System (SAMOS)
provides that up-to-the-minute information.
Managing the weather data flow
SAMOS as a rack unit placed in airport control towers
consisting of two servers running Muir Matheson's weather application
software (Metcom), a local display with KVM switch and a UPS to guarantee
up-time. Installed in each server is a Perle SX Serial
Card with an 8 port external SXDC serial device concentrator. As
there are two servers within the rack, one server is operational
while the other is used as a hot standby. In case of a failure, one
server backs up the other within 30 seconds.
Multiple meteorological sensors are located in weather
stations placed near the airport runways. Each meteorological sensor
is hardwire connected to the SX serial device concentrators at the
servers to transmit the weather data over RS485 serial lines into
the Muir Matheson's Metcom data processing system.
Following automatic processing and some manual input,
the information is made available to air traffic controllers and
other staff. Weather readings are displayed graphically in the control
tower and sent to pilots by a computer-based voice system (ATIS),
or to the aircrafts onboard computer, which gives them the option
to print out the weather data in the cockpit (D-ATIS).
By using Perle SX serial cards, Muir Matheson makes
sure that all instrument readings are received reliably for automatic
processing and visual display. The Metcom system not only records
the meteorological data for 30 days but has also earned a high operational
reliability rating within the aviation industry. Perle's serial interface
technology is also proving vital for the migration of Muir Matheson's
original DOS-based system to Microsoft Windows 2000/XP offering enhanced
processing power and full-colour graphics.
"Perle's SX Serial Cards will be in every control tower of every major airport in the UK" Colin Crighton, Senior
Project Engineer, Muir Matheson Ltd.
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