International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-21, 2004 / Town & Country Resort, San Diego, California / Modern spectrally efficient telemetry transmitters are beginning to find their way on a variety of airborne test platforms. Many of these platforms also include Global Positioning System (GPS)-based Time-Space-Position-Information (TSPI) instrumentation systems. Due to space and other limitations, many of these platforms have demanding antenna placement limitations requiring closely spaced antennas. This paper describes steps taken to identify and mitigate potential interference to GPS-based TSPI instrumentation systems by these new technology transmitters. Equipment characterization was accomplished to determine interference potential of the proposed new transmitters and susceptibility of several GPS TSPI receivers. Several filtering techniques were identified as possible solutions to the anticipated interference problems. Telemetry (TM)/GPS system mockups and laboratory tests of the same were accomplished. Open-air testing was then accomplished to validate laboratory results. Finally, on aircraft tests were accomplished prior to performing any aircraft system modifications. Results of these test efforts are presented for others to consider when planning similar modifications to other platforms.

ITC/USA 2006 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Second Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 23-26, 2006 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / In this paper we describe a new method that is applicable to mitigating both multipath interference and adjacent channel interference (ACI) in aeronautical telemetry applications using ARTM Tier-1 waveforms. The proposed method uses a linear equalizer that is derived using Kalman filtering theory, which has been used for channel equalization for high-speed communication systems. We illustrate the proposed method with numerical examples obtained from simulations that show the bit error rate performance (BER) for different modulation schemes.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / Design and performance evaluation of a low-complexity equalizer for recently standardized spectral efficient Feher patented quadrature phase shift keying (FQPSK) system [1] over multipath fading channel is presented. The implementation based on a Feher patented equalizer (FE) [1] is of a structure with three branches, which are individually used to compensate for a moving fade notch with different locations. These branches are switched by the control signal that is generated based on pseudo-error on-line detection technique. It is demonstrated that for typical aeronautical telemetry RF frequency selective fading channels, having delay spreads in 20 – 200 ns range, the adaptive FE reduces the number of statistical outages by more than 60% without the need for training bits and without increasing the receiver synchronization time.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / The Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of FQPSK modulated signals in the presence of the Co-Channel Interference (CCI) and Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) is evaluated and improved. A Non- Linearly Amplified (NLA) FQPSK modulated signal with the data rate of 1Mb/s and carrier frequency of 70 MHz is interfered with a sinusoidal signal at different frequencies. As the relative distance of the center frequency of the Co-channel interference (CCI) changes, different BER are obtained. The effect of the CCI decreases as the CCI center frequency moves away from the center of the modulated signal. In order to improve the BER in the presence of the CCI, a hard limited filter is added at the receiver input. The hard limited filter has a different amplification factor for different signal strength. As a result, the amplification factor for the CCI, which is normally a weaker signal, is smaller than the actual signal. This means that the signal is amplified more than the interference and as a result the CCI is suppressed and the BER rate improves. The results of both simulations and measurements are obtained for different CCI center frequencies, before and after the improvements.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Organizations such as the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and various commercial entities use a wide range of spectral efficiency criteria in different broadcast and wireless system applications. These criteria and related specifications have significant differences. This paper briefly reviews some common adjacent channel interference (ACI) definitions as well as issues surrounding the definition of spectral efficiency. The impact of these parameters on system bit error rate (BER) performance and closely "packed" adjacent signals is described. ACI criteria and spectral efficiency definitions considered appropriate for existing telemetry applications and deployment of new generations of spectrally efficient systems are illustrated. Specific ACI and spectral efficiency performance requirements adopted by the Department of Defense (DoD) and Advanced Range Telemetry (ARTM) project are highlighted.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1998 / Town & Country Resort Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / A new constant envelope modulation scheme for OQPSK, called FQPSK-O, is presented. This modulation technique is an extension of the Feher Quadrature Shift Keying (FQPSK) patented technologies, see Ref[l]. This scheme uses cubic spline interpolation to generate very smooth baseband waveforms in order to increase the spectral and power efficiency. Being a constant envelope modulation, FQPSK-O can operate with class C power amplifier without spectrum regrowth. We achieve a more compact spectrum with comparable bit error rate performance. For example, the spectrum of FQPSK-O is 25% narrower than that of GMSK with BT(b)=0.3 and FQPSK-1 with hardlimiter [2] at -40 dB attenuation point. For coherent demodulation under AWGN channel, FQPSK-O has almost the same BER performance as FQPSK-1 with hardlimiter. Both of them are better than GMSK with BT(b)=0.3 for BER < 10^-4. In Rayleigh fading channel, FQPSK-O outperforms GMSK with BT(b)=0.3 by 2 dB. FQPSK-O is an excellent scheme for wireless and satellite communications which require high spectral and power efficiency.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 21, 2002 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / This paper will present measured data in an adjacent channel interference (ACI) environment for filtered continuous phase frequency shift keying (CPFSK or FM), multi-h continuous phase modulation (multi-h CPM or CPM for short) [1] and Feher’s patented quadrature phase shift keying (FQPSK-B) [2]. This paper is an extension of my 2001 International Telemetering Conference paper on this topic [3]. The quantity measured was bit error probability (BEP) versus signal energy per bit to noise power spectral density ratio (E(b)/N(o)). The interferers were CPFSK, CPM, or FQPSK-B signals. The results presented in this paper will be for a desired signal bit rate of 5 Mb/s, one interferer 20 dB larger than desired signal (a few tests included two interferers), and various center frequency spacings, interfering signals, receivers, and demodulators. The overall ACI test effort will collect data sets at several bit rates and with one and two interferers. The results will be useful to system designers and range operators as they attempt to maximize the number of Mb/s that can be simultaneously transmitted with minimal interference in the telemetry bands.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 22-25, 2001 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Design, performance Test and Evaluation (T&E) of a novel smart diversity receiver, based on Feher Diversity (FD) patents over multipath, fast dynamic frequency selective fading channels is presented. A hardware simulator for construction of a frequency selective fading channel has been implemented in laboratory to resemble a telemetry aeronautical channel model, namely the two-path channel model. As an illustrative example, the block error rate (BLER) of a 1 Mb/s rate IRIG 106-00 and CCSDS standardized Feher’s patented quadrature phase shift keying (FQPSK) [1][2] with and without diversity in multipath frequency selective fading channels has been tested and evaluated. The experimental results clearly indicate significant performance improvement with the proposed diversity technique even in cases of severely distorted channels.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 22-25, 2001 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Multi-h CPM has been selected as the Tier II waveform for the Advanced Range Telemetry (ARTM) program, because it offers 50% better spectral efficiency than Feher-patented FQPSK, which is the Tier I waveform. Shaped Offset QPSK has been shown to be nearly identical in performance to Feher-patented FQPSK. Both the Tier I and Tier II waveforms must operate in the presence of adjacent channel interference in order to meet the range community's telemetry requirements. This paper presents an experimental characterization of SOQPSK and Multi-h CPM in the presence of adjacent channel interference, over a range of channel spacings and differential signal amplitudes. Quantitative results are presented which demonstrate the relative robustness of the ARTM Tier I and Tier II waveforms, with adjacent channel interference representative of a typical range environment.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 22-25, 2001 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / A new class of non-coherent detection techniques for recently standardized Feher patented quadrature phase-shift keying (FQPSK) systems is proposed and studied by computer aided design/simulations and also verified by experimental hardware measurements. The theoretical concepts of the described non-coherent techniques are based on an interpretation of the instantaneous frequency deviation or phase transition characteristics of FQPSK-B modulated signal at the front end of the receiver. These are accomplished either by Limiter-Discriminator (LD) or by Limiter-Discriminator followed by Integrate-and-Dump (LD I&D) methods. It is shown that significant BER performance improvements can be obtained by increasing the received signal’s observation time over multiple symbols as well as by adopting trellis-demodulation. For example, our simulation results show that a BER=10^-4 can be obtained for an E(b)/N(0)=12.7 dB.