ITC/USA 2009 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fifth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 26-29, 2009 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper provides an introduction to the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) scheme which has been proposed for future aeronautical telemetry applications. OFDM offers the potential for high data rates on radio channels with multipath such as aeronautical telemetry channels. This paper provides in introduction to OFDM and demonstrates how orthogonality is maintained over multipath channels by the introduction of a guard band and by the inclusion of a cyclic prefix. The simulation of OFDM in multipath is simulated and performance results are presented that show the degradation of this scheme on a multipath channel with and without the guard band and the cyclic prefix.

ITC/USA 2008 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fourth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 27-30, 2008 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / Due to vehicle dynamics in mobile systems, GPS signal reception may be blocked by the body of the vehicle. This paper discusses various studies made on some vehicles such as the Space Shuttle, various aircraft, and analyzes the implementation of dual GPS antenna systems. Constructive and destructive interference characteristics of signal combining are considered. The author suggests an approach which uses a delay line on one of the antennas while analyzing the front end C/N0 needed for L1 GPS reception. An embedded Excel spreadsheet provides a front-end Noise Figure (NF) calculation tool based on user selected parameters.

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 / A Synthetic Beamforming antenna was built for Airborne Telemetry. Low-Noise Block-converters translated RF to IF suitable for direct analog-to-digital conversion. Then all telemetry functions were performed digitally via parallel FPGAs for 10 independent sources. Monopulse tracking and optimal diversity combination was performed using 4 antenna quadrants at two orthogonal polarizations. Novel estimation approaches drove digital demodulation, symbol- and bit- synchronization. Final telemetry outputs include: digital, analog (video), and analog IF (e.g., for downlink relay). This program has incubated several concepts that we believe have the combined potential to significantly improve the future of telemetry.

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 / Parameterized data from ARTM channel sounding test flights are used to derive a parameter-based estimate of the scattering function. The Doppler bandwidth and Doppler spread, important measures of channel dynamics, can be estimated from such a scattering function. Data collected from ARTM Flight 11 suggest that the Doppler bandwidth is larger than 6.7 Hz. Even for very small collections of parameterized data, surprising agreement is shown to non-parametric scattering function estimates. This confirms modeling assumptions and offers a way to achieve significant reductions of storage requirements.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / In an effort to determine a more accurate characterization of the multipath fading effects on telemetry signals, the BYU telemetering group is implementing an inexpensive data acquisition system to measure these effects. It is designed to measure important signals in a diversity combining system. The received RF envelope, AGC signal, and the weighting signal for each beam, as well as the IRIG B time stamp will be sampled and stored. This system is based on an 80x86 platform for simplicity, compactness, and ease of use. The design is robust and portable to accommodate measurements in a variety of locations including aircraft, ground, and mobile environments.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper presents a mathematical model for Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM) in frequency selective multipath encountered in aeronautical telemetry. The use of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) for modulation and demodulation is reviewed. Error control coding with interleaving in frequency is able to provide reliable data communications during frequency selective multipath fade events. Simulations demonstrate QPSK mapped COFDM performs well in a multipath fading environment with parameters typically encountered in aeronautical telemetry.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1998 / Town & Country Resort Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / As renewal interest in building vehicles based on hypersonic technologies begin to emerge again, test ranges anticipating in supporting flight research of these vehicles will face a set of engineering problems. Most fundamentals of these will be to track and gather error free telemetry from the vehicles in flight. The first series of vehicles will likely be reduced-scale models that restrict the locations and geometric shapes of the telemetry antennas. High kinetic heating will further limit antenna design and construction. Consequently, antennas radiation patterns will be sub-optimal, showing lower gains and detrimental nulls. A mobile system designed to address the technical issues above will be described. The use of antenna arrays, spatial diversity and a hybrid tracking system using optical and electronic techniques to obtain error free telemetry in the present of multipath will be presented. System tests results will also be presented.

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 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / Three Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) mapped COFDM systems demonstrating a continuum of complexity levels are simulated over an evolving three ray model of the multipath fading channel with parameters interpolated from actual channel sounding experiments. The first COFDM system uses coherent QPSK and convolutional coding with interleaving in frequency, channel equalization and soft decision decoding; the second uses convolutional coding with interleaving in frequency, Differential Phase Shift Keying (DPSK) and soft decision decoding; the third system uses a quaternary BCH code with DPSK mapping and Error and Erasure Decoding (EED). All three systems are shown to be able to provide reliable data communication during frequency selective fade events. Simulations demonstrate QPSK mapped COFDM with reasonable complexity performs well in a multipath frequency selective fading environment under parameters typically encountered in aeronautical telemetry.