Definition
The electronic subsystem within an Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS) that collects raw measurements from the field sensors — wind, temperature, dew point, pressure, visibility, cloud height, and precipitation — and processes them into the standardized weather report broadcast to pilots over radio or telephone.
Plain English
It is the part of an automated airport weather station that gathers all the sensor readings and turns them into the weather report you hear on the AWOS frequency.
Context Anchor
Seen in airport weather equipment discussions, maintenance information, and acronym lists related to AWOS weather reports.
Derivation
AWOS stands for Automated Weather Observing System. 'Data acquisition' is a standard engineering term meaning the gathering of measurements from sensors so a computer can use them. So ADAS is literally the data-gathering engine inside the AWOS.
Why Pilots Care
When you tune an AWOS frequency before landing, the voice broadcast you hear is built by ADAS. Knowing the term helps when reading FAA publications or NOTAMs that reference outages or upgrades to the system supplying your destination weather.
Intuition Check
ADAS does not mean a car driver-assistance system here. In this aviation context, it means the system that collects data for an airport’s automated weather report.
Example Sentence 1
A NOTAM advised that the ADAS at the field was out of service, so the AWOS broadcast was unavailable that morning.
Example Sentence 2
Technicians performed routine calibration on the ADAS sensors to keep the transmitted weather data accurate for arriving aircraft.