Digital-Twin-Enabled Task Scheduling for State Monitoring in Aircraft Testing Process

During the flight control system testing (FCST) process, multiple testing tasks should be completed. Battery-powered wireless sensors are used to measure the motion state of each flight control surface. In this article, we investigate a multitask scheduling problem to enhance overall monitoring accuracy during the FCST process. However, the decline in sensor battery levels, along with limited time slot resources, impacts the transmission quality of measurement data, leading to reduction in monitoring accuracy. Thus, we analyze the relationship among battery levels, transmission power, and monitoring accuracy to transform the original problem into an expectation probability maximization problem. Three important factors of monitoring accuracy are identified, based on which, we present the accuracy-oriented task scheduling (AOTS) algorithm. To validate the effectiveness of AOTS algorithm, we compare its performance among three different scheduling orders. Simulation results demonstrate that AOTS algorithm can not only improve the testing accuracy, but also reduce the fluctuation in accuracy among all testing tasks. Additionally, there are various elements in the FCST process that need to be uniformly managed to enhance the level of digitization. To address this issue, we design a digital twin enabled FCST (DT-FCST) system to manage data, models and algorithms in the FCST process. Finally, we implement the AOTS algorithm into developed DT-FCST system.