Seraphim

To utilize a new radar system developed by Lincoln Laboratories, it was necessary to develop a custom UAV. Seraphim is an unmanned aircraft that can operate above 59,000 ft and fly for 30 hours. It is a fixed wing and fuselage vehicle with a high aspect ratio and twin turboprop engines. Seraphim was designed for the largest of the apertures our team of twelve was presented with, but it can also accept any of the smaller apertures. The Integrated Electronics Sled allows for quick box replacement and reconfiguration of avionic components.

The avionics architecture I designed was centered on a dual-redundant mission management computer and a dual set of flight critical avionics subsystems. The Integrated Communication System architecture is composed of an X-band Line-Of-Sight antenna, a three axis ku-band antenna for satellite communication, and two UHF datalinks for redundancy. Both the avionics and ICS architectures can be seen below.