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 / Tactical training ranges provide an opportunity for all of the armed forces to assess operational readiness. To perform this task the various training ranges have deployed numerous telemetry systems. The current design efforts in place to upgrade the capabilities and unify the ranges under one telemetry system do not address the training ranges' need to maintain their training capability with the legacy systems that have been deployed until the new systems are ready. Two systems that have recently undergone sustainment efforts are the Player and Event Tracking System (TAPETS) and the Large Area Tracking Range (LATR). TAPETS is a telemetry system operated by the U.S. Army Operational Test Command. The TAPETS system is comprised of the ground mobile station Standard Range Unit (SRU) and the aircraft Inertial Global Positioning System (GPS) Integration (IGI) Pod. Both systems require a transponder for the wireless communications link. LATR is an over the horizon telemetry system operated by the U.S. Navy at various test ranges to track ground based, ship based, and airborne participants in training exercises. The LATR system is comprised of Rotary Wing (RW), Fixed Wing (FW) Pods, Fixed Wing Internal (FWI), Ship, and Ground Participant Instrumentation Packages (PIPs) as well as Ground Interrogation Station (GIS) and relay stations. Like the TAPETS system, each of these packages and stations also require a transponder for the wireless communications link. Both telemetry systems have developed additional capabilities in order to better support and train the Armed Forces, which consequently requires more transponders. In addition, some areas were experiencing failures in their transponders that have been deployed for many years. The available spare components of some systems had been depleted and the sustainment requirements along with the increased demand for assets were beginning to impact the ability of the systems to successfully monitor the training ranges during exercises. The path to maintaining operational capability chosen for the TAPETS system was a mixed approach that consisted of identifying a depot level repair facility for their transponders and funding the development of new transponder printed circuit boards (PCB's) where obsolescence prevented a sufficient number of repairable units. In the case of LATR, the decision was made to create new transponders to take advantage of cost effective state-of-the-art RF design and manufacturing processes. The result of this effort is a new transponder that is operationally indistinguishable from the legacy transponder in all installation environments. The purpose of this paper is to present two successful system sustainment efforts with different approaches to serve as models for preserving the current level of training range capabilities until the next generation of telemetry systems are deployed. While the two programs illustrated here deal primarily with the transponder components of the systems, these same methods can be applied to the other aspects of legacy telemetry system sustainment efforts.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 28-31, 1996 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / This paper reviews the performance requirements that provided the baseline for development of the onboard data system, RF transmission system, and ground segment receiving system of the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) spacecraft. The onboard Command and Data Handling (C&DH) System was designed to support the high data outputs of the three imaging sensor systems onboard the spacecraft and the requirement for large volumes of data storage. Because of the high data rates, it was necessary to construct a dedicated X-band ground receiver system at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and implement a tape recorder system for recording and downlinking sensor and spacecraft data. The system uses two onboard tape recorders to provide redundancy and backup capabilities. The storage capability of each tape recorder is 54 gigabits. The MSX C&DH System can record data at 25 Mbps or 5 Mbps. To meet the redundancy requirements of the high-priority experiments, the data can also be recorded in parallel on both tape recorders. To provide longer onboard recording, the data can also be recorded serially on the two recorders. The reproduce (playback) mode is at 25 Mbps. A unique requirement of the C&DH System is to multiplex and commutate the different output rates of the sensors and housekeeping signals into a common data stream for recording. The system also supports 1-Mbps real-time sensor data and 16-kbps real-time housekeeping data transmission to the dedicated ground site and through the U.S. Air Force Satellite Control Network ground stations. The primary ground receiving site for the telemetry is the MSX Tracking System (MTS) at APL. A dedicated 10-m X-band antenna is used to track the satellite during overhead passes and acquire the 25-Mbps telemetry downlinks, along with the 1-Mbps and 16-kbps real-time transmissions. This paper discusses some of the key technology trade-offs that were made in the design of the system to meet requirements for reliability, performance, and development schedule. It also presents some of the lessons learned during development and the impact these lessons will have on development of future systems.