Glossary
Glass Cockpit Lingo
For those of you that are new to digital flight instruments, we have collected a small glossary with the most frequently used terms:
Glossary
| Acronym | Explanation |
| AHRS | AHRS is short for Attitude Heading Reference System. It consists of one or more cases with multiple sensors that provide the EFIS/PFD with information about the aircraft's heading and attitude (pitch, yaw). |
| AD/AHRS | An AD/AHRS is an Air Data Attitude Heading Reference System. It's like an AHRS, but with some gadgets added to measure temperature, airspeed and altitude (through analog/digital converters that make the static port and pitot port information available to the computer). |
| COTS | COTS is an acronym for 'commercial, of the shelf' - as opposed to 'proprietary'. Not really a glass cockpit definition percé, it describes the usage of common commercially available components; applicable both to hard- and software. |
| EFIS |
EFIS is an acronym for 'Electronic Flight Information System', sometimes it's also called an 'Electronic Flight Instrument System'. According to Wikipedia, an EFIS is a flight deck instrument display system in which the display technology used is elecronic rather than electromechanical. |
| MEMS | MEMS is short for "Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems", which describes the (almost nano-) technology that made low cost 3-axis sensors - those that are part of an AHRS/ADAHRS - a reality. |
| PFD | PFD is an acronym for 'Primary Flight Display'. A PFD is the screen that houses the ADI (the Attitude Director Indicator) or - in a somewhat less feature laden guise - the artificial horizon. |
| Simulator | From a presentation point of view, the downloadable oc_EFIS/PFD Simulator is almost the real thing, less the modules that are needed to communicate with AD/AHRS- & GPS-devices. Also, code modules that validate and normalize the various data input streams are not included either. |
