International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Range Safety Systems are used for destruction of a vehicle should a malfunction cause the vehicle to veer off course. All vehicles launched into space require implementation of a Range Safety System. For years the IRIG receivers have been used with relatively good success. Unfortunately, the IRIG receivers do not provide a high level of security. High alphabet receivers were later developed for use on the big launchers (Atlas, Delta, Titan, etc) and the manned missions (Shuttle) to provide added security. With the IRIG based system, several problems have occurred resulting in the loss millions of dollars worth of equipment. Due to the problems that have occurred it has become apparent that there is a need for a more secure, low cost, type of range safety receiver. This paper describes the design and development of the prototype EFTS system. Mission critical parameters are discussed including selection of the encryption and forward error correction algorithms. Actual measured performance including message error rate characteristic is presented.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 22-25, 2001 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper proposes a modification of the high alphabet method of data transmission over an RF carrier. The system maps eleven characters into three tones. The three tones are Frequency Modulated onto an RF carrier. The 165 unique characters can be utilized for data transmission. The advantages of this system are: 1. Longer duration data words which have narrow bandwidth yielding a high signal to noise ratio. 2. Digital Signal Processing can be utilized to reconstruct characters from the tri-tone encoding. 3. The system will be less susceptible to external interference than normal Frequency Shift Keying system. The majority of the three tone burst would have to masked in order to loose a data word.

ITC/USA 2007 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Third Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2007 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper discusses the methodology, requirements, tests, and implementation plan for the live demonstration of the Enhanced Flight Termination System (EFTS) using a missile program at two locations in Florida: Eglin Air Force Base (AFB) and Tyndall AFB. The demonstration included the integration of EFTS Flight Termination Receivers (FTRs) onto the missile and the integration of EFTS-program-developed transmitter assets with the mission control system at Eglin and Tyndall AFBs. The initial test stages included ground testing and captive-carry flights, followed by a launch in which EFTS was designated as the primary flight termination system for the launch.

The Enhanced Flight Termination System uses weak CPM as its modulation scheme and a limiter-discriminator as its demodulation scheme. A PAM representation of weak CPM was developed which representation provided the necessary componenents to build a simplified PAM-based receiver that outperformed the EFTS limiter-discriminator, even in the presence of phase noise. The PAM representation also provided a new perspective into the negative characteristics of weak CPM.