Avionics & Flight Control

Sensors, navigation, radar and fly-by-wire. The electronics that navigate and fly aircraft: air data, inertial and satellite navigation, radar, Kalman-filter sensor fusion, PID control, and fly-by-wire flight control systems and autopilots.

• Avionics, Navigation & Air Data Systems — The electronic nervous system of an aircraft. Learn the flight instruments and air data (pitot-static, AoA vanes, ADIRU), inertial navigation (IMU, gyros, accelerometers, drift), GNSS and augmentation (SBAS, RAIM), radio navigation (VOR, DME, ILS), sensor fusion, communication and surveillance (VHF, SATCOM, transponders, ADS-B, TCAS), glass cockpits and flight management systems, avionics data buses (ARINC 429, AFDX, MIL-STD-1553) and integrated modular avionics — with Python converting pitot pressure to airspeed.
• Radar — Radar detects and measures objects using radio echoes. Learn pulse radar ranging, range resolution, PRF and maximum unambiguous range, the radar equation, radar cross-section, Doppler velocity, FMCW radar (automotive), pulse compression, clutter and MTI, and modern phased-array and imaging radars.
• Kalman Filtering & Model Predictive Control — Estimation and optimisation at the top of the control pyramid. Learn the Kalman filter (predict/update, gain, covariance, Q and R tuning), sensor fusion and the extended Kalman filter, and model predictive control (prediction horizon, cost function, constraints, receding horizon, offset-free MPC) — with a running Kalman filter and a constrained MPC in plain Python.
• PID Tuning & Digital Implementation — Making PID work on real plants. Learn PID forms (ideal, parallel, series), tuning methods (Ziegler–Nichols open and closed loop, Cohen–Coon, IMC/lambda, SIMC), derivative filtering and derivative-on-measurement, setpoint weighting, integral windup and anti-windup, bumpless transfer, discretisation and sample time — with a full discrete PID simulator in Python comparing Z-N and SIMC tuning.
• Flight Control Systems, Fly-by-Wire & Autopilots — From cables to computers. Learn mechanical, hydraulic and fly-by-wire flight controls, actuators (servo-hydraulic, EHA, EMA), stability augmentation (pitch and yaw dampers), control laws (normal, alternate, direct) and envelope protection, autopilot modes and loop structure (inner attitude loops, outer path loops, autothrust), redundancy and dissimilarity, and drone flight controllers — with Python simulating a pitch-rate damper.