Data Acquisition over Ethernet

Modern military and industrial systems generate more data at more locations than at any point in their history. Sensors are no longer concentrated in a single electronics bay. They are distributed across vehicles, aircraft, ships, test stands, and complex mechanical assemblies. Position sensors, pressure transducers, temperature probes, strain gauges, and specialized analog sources often live deep inside subsystems that are physically distant from central processing electronics.

At the same time, Ethernet has become the dominant backbone for system integration. It is no longer just a convenience for maintenance and logging. It is the primary transport for command, control, sensor data, and health monitoring. In this environment, the traditional concept of centralized data acquisition is increasingly mismatched to the way platforms are actually built.

A more natural architecture is to acquire data where it is generated and move the results over the network. This is the design philosophy behind systems such as CommandNet Edge and Digital Commander. Rather than treating Ethernet as something that only connects large equipment racks, these systems use it as the primary fabric for distributed measurement.

In a conventional architecture, analog signals are routed over long distances to centralized acquisition hardware. This creates familiar problems. Cable harnesses grow large and heavy. Installation becomes time-consuming and error-prone. Signal integrity is harder to control as analog paths pass through electrically noisy environments and across multiple grounding domains. Over time, connectors and wiring become a major contributor to intermittent faults that are difficult to reproduce or diagnose.

CommandNet Edge and Digital Commander take a fundamentally different approach. They place precision acquisition hardware near the sensors themselves. Analog signals are conditioned, digitized, and validated locally. Once the data is in digital form, it is transported over Ethernet to wherever it is needed in the system.

This shift has a profound impact on system architecture. Instead of thinking in terms of how to route hundreds of analog signals back to a central rack, designers think in terms of where to place acquisition nodes and how to connect them to the network. The physical layout of the platform becomes simpler, more modular, and far easier to evolve over time.

Both CommandNet Edge and Digital Commander are designed for this distributed role, but they serve slightly different purposes within the same architectural philosophy. CommandNet Edge is optimized for deployment directly on the platform, close to sensors and transducers. It is designed to tolerate shock, vibration, temperature extremes, and noisy power. It becomes part of the machine or vehicle itself, quietly acquiring data and publishing it onto the network.

Digital Commander, on the other hand, is often used as a more centralized or semi-centralized acquisition and control node, particularly in test, integration, and support environments. It still operates on the same network-centric principles, but it is frequently used where higher channel density, greater local processing, or more extensive local storage is required.

A key capability shared by both systems is local data storage. This is not a minor feature. It fundamentally changes how data acquisition systems are used in the field. Instead of depending entirely on continuous network connectivity or real-time streaming to a central recorder, these systems can log data locally at full fidelity. If the network is interrupted, the data is not lost. If the platform is operating in a disconnected or contested environment, the data is still captured. When connectivity is restored, the data can be retrieved or synchronized.

From a signal integrity perspective, acquiring data at the source has obvious advantages. Short analog runs are easier to shield, easier to ground properly, and far less exposed to electromagnetic interference. Temperature gradients across long cable runs are no longer a factor. In many real-world systems, measurement stability and repeatability improve simply because the analog portion of the signal path has been minimized.

From a maintenance perspective, the benefits are equally significant. A distributed acquisition node is a well-defined, replaceable unit. If a problem occurs, the system can often report not just that data is missing or out of range, but that a specific channel, module, or sensor is behaving abnormally. This turns troubleshooting from a hunt through wiring harnesses into a targeted maintenance action.

Network-based acquisition also enables a much more flexible approach to system integration. The same data stream can be consumed by multiple subsystems simultaneously. One consumer might be a control system. Another might be a display. A third might be a recorder or health monitoring application. None of these consumers need to be physically wired to the sensor. They only need access to the network.

Concerns are sometimes raised about latency and determinism, particularly for control or closed-loop applications. In practice, modern deterministic Ethernet networks already support many mission-critical functions. When data is digitized and timestamped at the source, the resulting behavior is far more predictable than a system that relies on long analog signal paths subject to noise, drift, and intermittent interference. Fixed, known delays are far easier to manage in a control system than variable and poorly characterized analog errors.

Another important advantage of this architecture is how well it supports incremental growth and modernization. Adding a new sensor does not require a major harness redesign or new central hardware. It requires adding another acquisition node or expanding an existing one, connecting it to the network, and updating software. The physical system evolves in a modular, controlled way.

It is also important to emphasize that this approach does not require abandoning existing sensors or transducers. Legacy analog sensors, including synchros, resolvers, LVDTs, and traditional analog transducers, fit naturally into this architecture. The modernization occurs in the acquisition and transport layers, not in the sensing hardware itself.

CommandNet Edge and Digital Commander are not IT products adapted for industrial or military use. They are instrumentation-grade systems designed from the beginning for harsh environments, long service life, and mission-critical roles. They exist to solve a real architectural problem that modern platforms increasingly face: how to acquire large amounts of distributed data reliably, accurately, and in a way that scales with the system.

As platforms continue to become more distributed and more software-defined, the idea of centralized data acquisition will continue to fade. In its place, network-centric, distributed measurement will become the norm. Systems like CommandNet Edge and Digital Commander are not just a different way to connect sensors. They represent a different way to think about how data flows through a modern platform.