A Microprocessor Based Wind Analyser
R Kerpen, R Zeltzer, Ian D. Sharp · 1978
This paper will be presented in two parts. The first will describe the wind analyser, which is a microprocessor based system built by the Australian Department of Transport. Its function is to read one or more anemometers at an airport and present wind information to the airport control tower in a format recommended by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. The data to be passed to pilots prior to landing and take off, is the average wind speed and direction over the previous two minutes plus any excessive deviations that have occurred during the past 10 minutes. The second part of the paper outlines the techniques used in implementing the microprocessor based system and attempts to draw conclusions on their applicability to microprocessor systems in general. The majority of the programming for the wind analyser was carried out in FORTRAN. Due to the non availability of a resident FORTRAN compiler for the chosen micro-processor an unusual cross-compilation technique was used. The implementation and generality of this technique is discussed. An often repeated criticism of high level language programming for microprocessors is that the programs produced are 'inefficient'. This assertion is examined in relation to programmer productivity and to several optimisation techniques used in the project.