FreeFlight Systems 1203C SBAS/GNSS receiver unit yields impressive results in field reliability study

FreeFlight Systems, a leader in next-gen aerospace applications, announced that a recent field study has shown the 1203C SBAS/GNSS receiver unit to be one of the world’s most reliable devices in its class. The company found that this unit is substantially outperforming its originally predicted mean time between failure (MTBF) in real-world applications.

The study, based on actual return data from the approximately 2,500 units currently in operation, suggests a field MTBF well in excess of 100,000 flight hours. This compares very favorably to the predicted MTBF of 32,000 operating hours (a more lenient measure than flight hours).

“We’re extremely pleased at the results of our August 2020 field study, which yielded an actual measured MTBF of well over 100,000 flight hours,” said Tim Taylor, CEO and president. “We designed the 1203C receiver with one goal – to provide the highest possible reliability and availability of the units in the highly dispatch critical ADS-B Position Source application. We made it rugged but we kept the architecture simple.”

Integration of multiple functions into single systems can be an elegant and cost-effective approach for many applications, but that will always compromise the reliability of the system. It’s simple math – every time you add hardware to a box, you have more parts that can fail, you generate more heat and reliability goes down.

Taylor explained that an ADS-B Position source is a textbook dispatch critical box – and not just as a go-nogo item. In today’s “NextGen” airspace, the aircraft is continuously transmitting the output of the box to air traffic control (ATC), and there is a very low tolerance in the ATC system for any problems. Customers who are focused on dispatch reliability realize this is an item where reliability should not be compromised, and we are very pleased that our system is delivering this outstanding performance for those customers

Since its launch in 2010, the 1203C has been installed in approximately 2,500 aircraft worldwide and was originally designed for airline transport, military, and business aviation industries. The 1203C offers full integration capabilities with many of an aircraft’s next-gen and automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) technology compatible systems.