Aerospace and Electronic Systems - August 2018 - 5

The articles selected are contributions across this range of topics, and they reflect some crucial topics in metrology for aerospace. The
first article, "Proposed Landing on Europa: Instruments, Radiation Shielding, Planetary Protection, and Mission" by K. R. Fowler and S. A.
Dyer, explores the design of a space mission from the measurement and instrument point of view. It analyzes all topics concerning measuring instruments for a lander vehicle for studying Europa. The article is an interesting view on the difficulties and challenges for setting up
instruments for a space mission.
The second article, "A Cryogenic 0.35 μm CMOS Technology BSIM3.3 Model for Space Instrumentation: Application to a Bandgap
Design," cowritten by L. Varizat, G. Sou, M. Mansour, and D. Alison and awarded as the best MetroAeroSpace 2017 paper, deals with stateof-the-art electronics providing high performance under extreme conditions for space instrumentation, starting from small products to obtain
a great mission.
Aerospace companies rely on modern software analysis, test, and verification tools to ensure the safety, certification, and deployment of
sensors for safety- and mission-critical airborne systems and platforms. This is particularly important for sensors such as the inertial measurement unit (IMU). This topic is discussed in the third article, "An Overview of a New Sensor Calibration Platform," by P. Clausen, J. Skaloud,
R. Molinari, J. Lee, J. Balamuta, W. Yang, and S. Guerrier.
In the aerospace industry, many structural components such as wing panels and radomes are made with fiberglass and advanced composites that need accurate control. Composites are often stronger than conventional materials and weigh less. A method for monitoring the
health of the structure in composite panels by employing neural networks is carried out and discussed in the fourth article, "Artificial Neural
Networks for Impact Force Reconstruction on Composite Plates," by G. Sarego, M. Zaccariotto and U. Galvanetto.
The fifth and sixth articles deal with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The fifth article, "A Remote-Controlled Platform for UAS Testing," cowritten by B. Brzozowski, P. Daponte, L. De Vito, F. Lamonaca, F. Picariello, M. Pompetti, I. Tudosa, and K. Wojtowicz, deals with a
test bench called DronesBench, i.e., a testing platform for UAV metrological characterization and fault identification. The sixth article, titled
"An UAV System for Photovoltaic Plants Inspection," by P. Addabbo, A. Angrisano, M. Bernardi, G. Gagliarde, A. Mennella, M. Nisi, and S.
Ullo, proposes UAVs as substitutes for human workers for inspecting photovoltaic plants to reduce maintenance costs and intervention times.
Lastly, we wish to underline that aerospace organizations worldwide are simultaneously maintaining current equipment and driving
toward more complex, sophisticated systems-growing the need for more capable test and measurement equipment. All this highlights how
metrology for aerospace is a broad and rewarding area of research, and the articles in this special issue reflect this.
We commend them to you!

AUGUST 2018

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

Aerospace and Electronic Systems - August 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Aerospace and Electronic Systems - August 2018