The Impact of Special-Purpose Computers on Aircraft Equipment

Abstract

Computer techniques have made an increasing contribution to airborne navigation equipment, particularly in the field of radio navigation where in the past computers had generally been too powerful and much too costly to be of practical use. This paper sets out to review some of the progress achieved during the last decade and then to illustrate the impact this has had on airborne radio navigation equipment. In recent years computers have made very significant strides from almost every viewpoint; they have increased in capability and speed of operation, decreased in cost and power consumption, and improved in ruggedness. One characteristic that is particularly relevant to the field of radio navigation is the cost of the minimum practical computer. There is always a limit to how simple a computer can be made before it ceases to be practical and this limit is interesting because it has dropped dramatically over the last decade to a level which makes a computer competitive for solving the simpler problems which were previously solved by other means.