Electrical Design Concepts

The electrical concepts were based on redundancy. Redundancy requires additional components which increase the total weight, size, and most importantly, cost of the instruments.  The challenge was to obtain a balance between reliability, weight, space consumption, and cost.   The electrical design was broken down into the number of different components:

                                      Acceleration measurement(s)

                    Microcontroller(s)

                    Gyroscopes/magnetometer(s)

                    Telemetry system(s)

                    Tracking system(s)

     Several Design Concepts were considered for the Electrical Design that incorporated the above components (These concepts are detailed in the links to the left).  Each design was then ranked and scored in relation to criteria that were generated by the electrical team. 

     The name of each design represents the key component or focus of the design.  The reference design is the design that achieves the highest possible score in the ranking system used. 

     Decision tables were created to compare the different Electrical Designs.