Aerospace and Defense

Engineering Tasks

• Systems Engineering
• Engineering Data Analysis
• Control System Development
• Signal Processing and Communications System Development
• Test and Evaluation

Engineering Data Analysis

The aerospace and defense community builds vehicles and vehicle systems to last decades, and development cycles for these projects can run just as long. Analysts play a critical role in ensuring successful product delivery, in addition to maintaining optimal operational performance to extend the life of these systems. The MATLAB® technical computing environment is the de facto standard for performing aerospace, defense, and intelligence system analysis to understand system performance and behavior and make reliable decisions.

Pre- and Post-Mission Data Analysis
With MATLAB and Simulink® environments, you can analyze flight data before and after a mission. For example, systems engineers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory use MATLAB to perform trade-study analysis to understand system behavior before launching the spacecraft into space. MATLAB was also used to reconstruct the EDL phase of the mission using telemetry data. This allowed scientists to visualize the actual landing, and see just how close the final descent deviated from the predicted behavior.

Accessing Data and Connecting to Measurement Hardware
Whether reading data from an instrument or importing files from other software, aerospace analysts are using MATLAB to consolidate data formats and extrapolate information from the measured data. With MATLAB, you can quickly generate meaningful results for applications such as vehicle component and system-level testing.

The test and measurement capabilities in MATLAB allow you to interface with a wide range of test hardware, including data and image acquisition devices and traditional laboratory instruments such as oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, and function generators.

Analyzing and Visualizing Aerospace System Responses
The analysis capabilities of MATLAB enable you to make informed decisions regarding the safety, efficiency, and performance of an aerospace vehicle or vehicle system. MATLAB provides a flexible environment to manipulate, preprocess, and manage data and files. For example, aerospace systems analysts can understand vehicle system responses rapidly using the library of more than 1,000 pre-built math and analysis functions.

Engineers and scientists use MATLAB and custom functions for performing statistical analysis, signal processing, mapping, and image processing to analyze data from systems such as:

Satellites UAVs Radar and antennae Landing gear

Aircraft Engines Missiles Spacecraft

Programming and Developing Advanced Algorithms
MATLAB provides a high-level, math-based programming language that enables you to create and apply algorithms and technical concepts in a fraction of the time it would take to program in C, Fortran, and other traditional programming languages.

Aerospace software programmers can quickly and inexpensively prototype ideas without a lot of overhead using the MATLAB structured programming language. You can build, understand, and debug algorithms using the:

• Editor and debugger
• Profiler
• GUI building tools

You can also leverage investments in existing tools while gaining the power of MATLAB through two-way integration with:

• Fortran and C programs
• Java API class packages and other third-party Java classes
• COM based components

The programming language in MATLAB is used extensively to develop and deploy custom engineering and analysis applications for projects such as:

• Fingerprint recognition
• Satellite tracking
• Rocket propulsion analysis
• Earth observation visualization

Deploying Algorithms and System Analysis Tools
Aerospace and defense projects involve large teams of people throughout organizations and across companies. To help ensure project success, system integrators and contractors use MATLAB for reporting or documenting work, as well as sharing custom analysis tools with others. MATLAB provides several options for deploying these results:

• Export to many standard data and graphics file formats
• Publish your results to standard desktop publishing software
• Embed MATLAB commands and outputs in a Microsoft Word document
• Build custom reports and automate documentation tasks
• Create stand-alone applications or integrate MATLAB based applications with C/C++, Java, COM, or Excel based applications.

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