• Improves reliability through elimination of traditional engine gauges
• Simplifies flight deck through fewer standalone annunciators
• Reduces pilot workload with integrated flight deck and synoptic display of aircraft system status
• Reduces maintenance costs with real-time analysis of aircraft systems
• Reduces and simplifies training through use of easily interpreted synoptics display of major aircraft systems
• Provides redundancy that allows continued operations under most failure conditions

Modern aircraft have highly complex integrated aircraft systems. Those systems often generate more data than a flight crew can consume, creating a need for distillation into the information needed to operate and maintain the aircraft. The Collins EIS/EICAS solves this problem with an integrated solution that provides real-time monitoring and diagnostics of major aircraft systems.

The EIS-3000 Engine Indication System is designed to provide engine indication in an integrated flight deck. The information displayed includes torque, interstage turbine temperature, high and low pressure gas generator RPM, fuel flow, oil temperature, oil pressure and any other primary system indication that requires full-time display for aircraft operation.

The EICAS-5000 Engine Indication and Crew Alerting System fully integrates engine indication, crew alerting, synoptic display of aircraft systems and processing of maintenance data into the flight deck.

The crew alerting feature provides CAS messaging, flight deck lamp control and aural alerting. Aural alerts can include voice and synthesized tones.

Data acquisition and routing is often performed by a full-up EICAS because of its connectivity to a large number of aircraft systems. This connectivity provides a cost-effective architecture for data acquisition and routing. Features include ARINC 717 and ARINC 429 data routing to the Flight Data Recorder (FDR).

A typical EIS-3000 utilizes two large color Adaptive Flight Displays (AFDs), a Display Control Panel (DCP) and two to four EIS Data Concentrator Units (DCUs). Installations with Full Authority Digital Electronic Control (FADEC) and non-FADEC engines are supported.

A typical EICAS-5000 utilizes two large color AFDs, an EICAS Control Panel (ECP), one to three EICAS DCUs, one Remote Data Concentrator (RDC) and a Lamp Driver Unit (LDU). The following line replaceable units can be used to architect an EICAS scaled to the specific aircraft installation:

• Two AFDs
• ECP
• One to three DCUs (five DCU families allow scaling to any application)
• One to two RDCs (two RDC families allow scaling to any application)
• LDU

Large-format AFDs allow integration of EICAS, electronic flight instruments and situational awareness information on a single display unit. Two units are usually necessary to insure availability of engine information and meet certification requirements.

A typical EICAS display format would present the primary engine indication, primary system indication and crew alerting messages in fixed regions on the display. Display of this information is usually required throughout all phases of flight and includes engine, fuel, oil and pressurization parameters.

A secondary region of the display would be used to display secondary system indication and synoptic displays. This information is considered supplementary to the primary information above and many be required during certain phases of flight. Examples of secondary system indication include landing gear and surface position displays. Examples of synoptic displays include:

• Hydraulic System
• AC Electrical System
• DC Electrical System
• Flight Control System
• Environmental Control System
• Fuel System
• Anti-Ice System
• Engine Systems
• Door Positions

Maintenance and diagnostic processing performed by the EICAS include:

• Analysis of life-cycle utilization for aircraft systems
• Trend analysis for identification of pending failures and preventative maintenance needs
• Exceedance monitoring
• Fault diagnostics

The EIS-3000 and EICAS-5000 use manual and automatic page control and are generally tailored to the specific airframe application. Automatic page control is typically triggered by an event that requires immediate display of a particular EIS/EICAS parameter. Manual page control is performed with the ECP. Reversion of EIS/EICAS between displays is implemented in accordance with the airframe design, aircraft operational philosophy and flight deck operational philosophy.

The DCU transforms raw aircraft system data into EIS/EICAS information with the following functions:

• Data Acquisition. The DCU is connected to the engines and the aircraft systems that are monitored with the EIS/EICAS. The interfaces to these systems include analog sensors, discrete sensors and digital data (ARINC 429 high-speed and low-speed). The raw data is transformed into engineering units that can be routed to other systems and processed into display data.
• Engine Indication Processing. The DCU processes engine signals from FADEC and non-FADEC engines for EIS/EICAS display. The engine data is transformed and transmitted to the engine displays.
• Crew Alert Processing. The DCU processes aircraft system signals and generates CAS messages alerts, aural alerts and lamp enable signals that are transmitted to the displays, audio system and lamp driver unit.
• Synoptic Data Processing. The DCU processes aircraft system signals and generates synoptic display information that is transmitted to the displays.
• Flight Data Recorder Processing. The DCU acquires, formats and transmits aircraft system data to the FDR.
• Maintenance Data Processing. The DCU acquires, analyzes, formats and transmits aircraft system data to the maintenance and diagnostic computer.
• Data Routing. The DCU performs direct routing of data between aircraft systems, concentrates ARINC 429 serial data onto general use output busses and transmits transformed aircraft system data to other aircraft systems.

The RDC is used to increase the quantity of aircraft signals that can be processed and provides remote connectivity to aircraft systems in order to reduce the aircraft wiring and weight. It provides a low latency pull through of analog, discrete and digital signals onto general use ARINC 429 output busses.

The LDU is a dual-channel unit capable of driving up to 120 annunciator lamps. Channels one and two receive digital buses from all the DCUs. The busses contain lamp activation words from the DCUs. Channels one and two are identical and the outputs from each side are tied together (OR logic). If one channel lamp sink fails, the other channel lamp sink will provide the annunciator function. The LDU monitors the lamp sinks to verify correct function and outputs the lamp sink states on a digital bus to the DCUs.