LNB Federal Corporation

Bellerophon 1.3.0

Enterprise Documentation

Bellerophon Enterprise 1.3.0 · Product Overview · LNB Federal Corporation · October 2026

1. Overview

Bellerophon is a flight test data platform developed by LNB Federal Corporation. It reads flight test recordings in the IRIG 106 Chapter 10 format, converts recorded measurements into engineering units using a parameter dictionary, and gives a test team one shared library in which to index flights, plot parameters on a common time axis, search every flight for test conditions, and find limit exceedances.

Bellerophon Enterprise is the licensed, installable edition. It runs on a server inside the customer's network, serves many users through a web browser, processes recordings of up to 100 GB each by default (configurable), and keeps an audit log. It makes no connections to LNB Federal or to any other outside system.

Bellerophon is available to government agencies and to companies, universities and other organizations, subject to U.S. export control laws. See Eligible Customers under Legal.

About this document. This is the public overview of Bellerophon Enterprise for program offices, contracting officers and security reviewers. The complete User, Administration and Security Guide, including installation, configuration, the parameter dictionary reference and security configuration, is delivered with the licensed software.
Important: Bellerophon is a post-flight analysis tool. It is not a safety-of-flight system and is not certified for real-time range safety, flight control or airworthiness decisions. Verify any result against the program's approved data reduction before relying on it for a safety or certification decision.

2. Features

Flight Library

  • Indexes each recording by sortie, date, test article and duration, read from the recording's TMATS setup record and IRIG time packets.
  • Shows which data types each recording contains and lists limit exceedances found when the recording was processed.

Flight Detail

  • Stacked time history charts on a shared time axis, with an IRIG time readout at the cursor, drag to zoom and double-click to reset.
  • Limit lines and shaded exceedance bands, and a table of exceedances that zooms to each event.
  • Ground track drawn from latitude and longitude parameters and linked to the chart cursor, on a coordinate grid or on offline map tiles supplied by the customer. No maps are loaded from the internet.
  • Data quality: every recording receives a rating from checks on time, packets, PCM sync and subframes, MIL-STD-1553 errors and dropouts, and each parameter (no data, stuck values, values outside the valid range). Administrators set the thresholds, and the findings export as CSV.
  • Test points: test cards with a time window and pass or fail criteria, evaluated automatically against every recorded sample of the recording, shown on the time history and searchable across the library.
  • Post-flight report: one click produces a report with plots, statistics, exceedances, data quality and test point results, printable to PDF on Letter or A4 paper. Report templates set the content for each program.
  • Notes: engineers add time-stamped notes to a flight, such as a test point, an abort or an observation. Notes are drawn on the time history and open the chart at that moment.
  • Data export: the selected parameters for the current time window, written as CSV at the full recorded rate for MATLAB, Python or Excel.
  • Recorder inventory: channels and data types, MIL-STD-1553 traffic by remote terminal and subaddress, PCM stream status with sync errors, ARINC 429 labels, discretes, analog channels, Ethernet flows and the full TMATS record.

Search and Limits

  • Searches every flight in the library for intervals that meet one or more conditions at the same time, held for a minimum duration. Example: Mach above 0.9 and pressure altitude above 25,000 ft for at least 5 seconds.
  • Each result opens the flight zoomed to the matching interval.
  • Limit monitoring lists every exceedance of every dictionary limit across the library.
  • Exceedance report: every exceedance in the library, with sortie, parameter, limit, IRIG start time, duration and peak, as a CSV file for test reports.

Compare Flights

  • Overlays one parameter from up to four sorties on elapsed time, with minimum, maximum and mean for each, computed from every recorded sample in the window.

Parameter Dictionaries

  • Import from the TMATS setup record of a recording: PCM, MIL-STD-1553, discrete and analog measurements with units, conversions and limits. A preview lists every measurement that could not be imported, with the reason, before anything is saved.
  • Import from CSV with row-by-row validation; each error names the line and the field to correct. Dictionaries export to CSV and can be edited as a new version.
  • Linear and polynomial conversions to engineering units, limits, and valid ranges used by the data quality checks.
  • Derived parameters: calculated parameters such as Mach number, unit conversions and filtered signals, written as expressions with arithmetic, comparison and logic, and functions including a low-pass filter, rate of change, integral and delay. Derived parameters can be searched, plotted, compared and exported like recorded parameters.
  • A dictionary is applied automatically when its program name matches the TMATS program name in the recording, or it can be assigned to a flight by hand.

Data Access

  • A documented, read-only data access interface for recordings, parameters, time series, statistics, exceedances, data quality and test point results, used with personal access tokens that each user creates and revokes.
  • A Python client, written with the Python standard library only, that saves time series as CSV or MATLAB files, and as HDF5 or Parquet files when the standard h5py or pyarrow package is installed, for analysis in MATLAB, Python or other tools.
  • Every data access is recorded in the audit log.

Server and Administration

  • User accounts with three roles: administrator, engineer and viewer.
  • Sign-in with a password or with a smart card (CAC or PIV) through the customer's TLS reverse proxy. Password sign-in can be turned off.
  • Streaming upload and processing, so recordings of tens of gigabytes can be processed on ordinary hardware.
  • Full-flight views of millions of samples load in a fraction of a second.
  • Configurable system use notification at sign-in and an audit log of security-relevant actions, with the client address of each entry. Administrators page through the full log and export it as CSV for assessors.
  • Long library-wide searches do not delay other users.

3. Supported Data

Data typeChapter 10 data typeSupport in this release
TMATS setup record0x01Decoded, including the PCM format (P) groups and the recorder channel map (R); measurement definitions can be imported into a dictionary
Time Format 10x11Decoded, IRIG day-of-year and month-and-year formats
MIL-STD-1553 Format 10x19Decoded at word level; 16-bit and 32-bit values; bit fields
PCM Format 10x09Decoded in packed and unpacked modes with intra-packet headers, using the TMATS frame definition, including words of different lengths; subcommutated parameters by subframe ID word
PCM Format 1, throughput mode0x09Decoded: minor frames found by searching for the TMATS sync pattern
ARINC 429 Format 00x38Decoded; labels in octal; BNR and discrete fields; SDI and bus selection
Discrete Format 10x29Decoded; individual bits or multi-bit fields
Ethernet Format 0 and Format 10x68, 0x69Indexed with a flow summary (addresses, protocol, ports, frame counts); parameters decoded from IENA positional and fixed-layout iNET-X packets in UDP
Analog Format 10x21Decoded when all subchannels share one sample rate, sample length (up to 32 bits) and packing mode
Video, image, UART, CAN and other typesvariousCounted per channel; not decoded

"Decoded" means Bellerophon extracts parameter values from the data and converts them to engineering units. "Indexed" means Bellerophon reads the packets, counts them and reports their contents, but does not extract parameter values.

4. System Requirements

  • Node.js 22.5 or later. No other software or third-party packages are required.
  • Linux (recommended), Windows Server or macOS. Four CPU cores and 8 GB of memory are sufficient for most programs.
  • Disk space for the original recordings plus decoded data. Decoded parameters need about 16 bytes per sample. Example: 200 parameters sampled at 50 Hz for a 2-hour flight is 72 million samples, or about 1.2 GB of decoded data.
  • A TLS reverse proxy (for example nginx or Apache) for access across the network.
  • Deployment as a system service or a container on a server the customer controls, including closed and air-gapped networks.

5. Security Overview

  • Closed networks: the server and its web interface make no outbound connections and load no external resources.
  • Access control: administrator, engineer and viewer roles, with a configurable system use notification at sign-in.
  • Authentication: smart card (CAC/PIV) sign-in through the customer's TLS reverse proxy, or passwords with length requirements, salted password hashing, and sign-in throttling and lockout.
  • Cryptography: an optional FIPS mode in which Bellerophon starts only when Node.js runs with a FIPS provider enabled, for use with the customer's FIPS 140 validated cryptographic module.
  • Data access tokens: personal, read-only, revocable by the user or an administrator, and never stored in readable form.
  • Sessions and requests: protected session cookies, cross-site request forgery protection and a strict Content Security Policy.
  • Uploads and storage: uploads are accepted only when they begin with a valid Chapter 10 packet; on Linux and macOS, data files are readable only by the service account.
  • Audit: security-relevant actions are logged with time, user and client address, and administrators export the log as CSV for assessors.

Each release includes a security approval package for the customer's assessor, with the system boundary, a hardened deployment guide aligned with the applicable DISA STIG requirement areas, a NIST SP 800-53 Revision 5 control mapping and test evidence, and a software bill of materials listing every file. Detailed security configuration and settings are provided to the licensee's information system security officer with the software.

Shared Responsibilities

AreaLNB Federal CorporationLicensee
SoftwareDelivers the Software, corrects reproducible defects and releases updates during the support termInstalls updates and keeps a supported Node.js version
Host and networkDocuments requirements and recommended settingsOperates, hardens and patches the host, network, TLS proxy and backups
AuthorizationProvides documentation to support an assessmentObtains any required authorization to operate before operational use
AccountsProvides role-based access and audit recordsApproves users, assigns roles and reviews the audit log
DataHas no access to Licensee data unless the Licensee grants it in writing for supportOwns its recordings and dictionaries and decides how they may be processed and marked
Authorization: Bellerophon has not been assessed or authorized under the Risk Management Framework, holds no authority to operate, and is not approved for processing classified information. The licensee is responsible for obtaining any required authorization before operational use and for operating Bellerophon under its own security controls.

6. Licensing

Bellerophon Enterprise runs under a license file issued by LNB Federal Corporation for each order. The file names the licensee, the order, the tier, the number of active users, the number of servers and the license term.

  • The license is verified offline by its digital signature. Bellerophon never contacts LNB Federal Corporation or any license server, and reports no usage.
  • Users see a renewal notice before the end date, which allows time for a renewal order.
  • A 30-day grace period follows the end date with full use.
  • After the grace period Bellerophon becomes read-only: browsing, plots, search and export continue, so a customer always keeps access to its own data. Uploads and processing resume when a renewal is installed.

7. Validation and Performance

Bellerophon's Chapter 10 reader is tested against two independent open-source readers, pychapter10 and irig106lib, on published sample recordings. All 67 checks pass. Packet counts, MIL-STD-1553 message counts with the timestamps and data words of the first 200 messages of each recording, every ARINC 429 word, discrete states, Ethernet frame counts and byte totals, PCM packets per channel, UDP payloads and analog samples are compared with pychapter10. For PCM, every minor frame is checked for the TMATS sync pattern, frame timing is checked against the TMATS bit rate, the test pattern's frame counter is checked in every frame, and minor frames found in throughput mode are compared word for word with irig106lib.

In LNB Federal testing, Bellerophon Enterprise processed a 2.6 GB recording containing 13.7 million 1553 messages and 45.6 million PCM frames at 57 MB per second, with 379 MB of peak memory. Results depend on hardware and on the number of dictionary parameters.

The capabilities added in versions 1.2 and 1.3 are verified with public sample recordings and with synthetic recordings made by the tests. Validation against the customer's own program data, compared with the program's existing data reduction, is part of each deployment.

8. Known Limitations

  • PCM: asynchronous and tagged embedded formats are not decoded.
  • Dictionaries are imported from TMATS or CSV. Import from vendor configuration formats is planned.
  • Ethernet: parameters are decoded from IENA and iNET-X packets with fixed layouts; other payloads are indexed.
  • Video, image, UART, CAN and other data types are indexed but not decoded.

9. Glossary

ARINC 429
An avionics data bus standard. Each 32-bit word carries an 8-bit label that identifies the data, a 2-bit source/destination identifier (SDI), the data field, a sign/status matrix and a parity bit.
BNR
Binary (two's complement) data encoding used in ARINC 429 words.
Chapter 10
IRIG 106 Chapter 10, the Range Commanders Council standard for digital flight data recorders. It defines the packet format that Bellerophon reads.
Dictionary
The table that tells Bellerophon where each parameter is in the recording and how to convert it to engineering units. Programs often call this a parameter list or an instrumentation database.
Engineering units
Physical units such as feet, knots or degrees Celsius, as opposed to raw counts.
CAC and PIV
Common Access Card and Personal Identity Verification card: Government smart cards that carry the holder's identity certificate.
Derived parameter
A parameter calculated from other parameters, such as Mach number from pressures.
Exceedance
A period during which a parameter is above its high limit or below its low limit.
IENA and iNET-X
Packet formats that flight test data acquisition systems use to send measurements over Ethernet.
IRIG time
Day of year, hours, minutes and seconds, from the recorder's time source.
LSB
Least significant bit. Bellerophon numbers bits from 0 at the LSB.
Major frame and minor frame
A PCM stream repeats a fixed pattern of words. One repetition, beginning with the sync pattern, is a minor frame. The cycle of minor frames after which subcommutated parameters repeat is a major frame.
MIL-STD-1553
A military command/response data bus. A bus controller commands remote terminals (RT), each with an address 0 to 31, to transmit (T) or receive (R) up to 32 data words at a subaddress (SA).
PCM
Pulse code modulation telemetry: a continuous serial stream of fixed-length words arranged in frames.
Relative time counter
The recorder's free-running 10 MHz counter stamped on every packet, used to place each packet on the IRIG time line.
SFID
Subframe ID: a word in each PCM minor frame that counts minor frames within the major frame, used to locate subcommutated parameters.
Test point
A planned test condition, flown in a time window, with criteria that decide whether it was achieved.
Subcommutated parameter
A PCM parameter that appears in a given word position only in some minor frames, so it is sampled at a fraction of the frame rate.
TMATS
Telemetry Attributes Transfer Standard, IRIG 106 Chapter 9. The setup record at the start of a Chapter 10 recording that describes its channels, PCM formats and program.

10. Release Notes

Version 1.3.0

  • Spanish: an English / Español switch on every screen, and Spanish translations of the documentation, the security approval package, the legal notices and the license agreement (the English versions control).
  • Read-only data access interface with personal access tokens, and a Python client that saves CSV and MATLAB files, and HDF5 and Parquet files with standard Python packages.
  • Test points with pass or fail criteria, evaluated automatically and searchable across the library.
  • FIPS mode, a security approval package for assessors and a software bill of materials with each release.
  • Decoding of analog data and of parameters in IENA and iNET-X Ethernet packets.
  • PCM frame sync search in throughput mode and words of different lengths in one stream.
  • Ground track on offline map tiles supplied by the customer.

Version 1.2.0

  • Parameter dictionary import from TMATS, with a preview of every measurement not imported.
  • Data quality report and rating for every recording.
  • Derived (calculated) parameters.
  • Smart card (CAC/PIV) sign-in.
  • One-click post-flight report, printable to PDF, with report templates per program.
  • Dictionary export to CSV, polynomial conversions and valid ranges.

Version 1.1.0

  • Notes on flights, parameter data export at the full recorded rate, a library exceedance report and audit log export, all as CSV.
  • Signed license files verified offline, with renewal notices, a 30-day grace period and read-only access after expiry.
  • Full-resolution statistics in Compare; search and statistics in a background thread.
  • Decoding and timing improvements for MIL-STD-1553, Chapter 10 packet recovery and exceedance reporting.
  • Stricter parameter dictionary validation.
  • Security hardening of sign-in, sessions, uploads, file permissions and audit records.

Version 1.0.0

  • First release of Bellerophon Enterprise and the Bellerophon Evaluation edition.
  • Decoding of MIL-STD-1553, PCM, ARINC 429 and discretes; indexing of Ethernet and other data types.
  • Parameter dictionaries with limits; library-wide search and limit monitoring; flight comparison.
  • Multi-user server with roles, streaming ingest and an audit log.