International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 28-31, 1996 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / Lower operating budgets and reduced personnel are causing the operators of test ranges to consolidate their assets and seek ways to maximize their utilization. This paper presents the versatile approach used by the NASA Dryden Flight Test Facility located at Edwards Air Force Base to monitor, control and operate five of its diversely located telemetry systems from a central control room. It describes a new generation of multi-purpose antenna controllers which are currently being installed as part of this NASA upgrade program.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 28-31, 1996 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / This paper describes a new mobile self contained telemetry station designed for field testing of air-to-ground weapons. The telemetry station makes creative use of existing equipment and incorporates a unique dual axis tracking system to provide complete coverage of most missions.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 28-31, 1996 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / This paper discusses the telemetry processing and data verification performed by the SBV Processing, Operations and Control Center (SPOCC) located at MIT Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL). The SPOCC is unique among the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) Data Processing Centers because it supports operational demonstrations of the SBV sensor for Space-Based Space Surveillance applications. The surveillance experiment objectives focus on tracking of resident space objects (RSOs), including acquisition of newly launched satellites. Since Space Surveillance operations have fundamentally short timelines, the SPOCC must be deeply involved in the mission planning for the series of observations and must receive and process the resulting data quickly. In order to achieve these objectives, the MSX Concept of Operations (CONOPS) has been developed to include the SPOCC in the operations planning process. The SPOCC is responsible for generating all MSX spacecraft command information required to execute space surveillance events using the MSX. This operating agreement and a highly automated planning system at the SPOCC allow the planning timeline objectives to be met. In addition, the Space Surveillance experiment scenarios call for active use of the 1 Mbps real-time link to transmit processed targets tracks from the SBV to the SPOCC for processing and for short time-line response of the SPOCC to process the track of the new object and produce new commands for the MSX spacecraft, or other space surveillance sensors, to re-acquire the object. To accomplish this, surveillance data processed and stored onboard the SBV is transmitted to the APL Mission Processing Center via 1 Mbps contacts with the dedicated Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) station, or via one of the AFSCN RTS locations, which forwards the telemetry in real-time to APL. The Mission Processing facility at APL automatically processes the MSX telemetry to extract the SBV allocation and forwards the data via file transfer over a dedicated fractional T1 link to the SPOCC. The data arriving at the SPOCC is automatically identified and processed to yield calibrated metric observations of RSOs. These results are then fed forward into the mission planning process for follow-up observations. In addition to the experiment support discussed above, the SPOCC monitors and stores SBV housekeeping data, monitors payload health and status, and supports diagnosis and correction. There are also software tools which support the assessment of the results of surveillance experiments and to produce a number of products used by the SBV instrument team to assess the overall performance characteristics of the SBV instrument.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / Satellite transmission systems have proven themselves very effective in a variety of applications. One such application is the transmission of telemetry (TM) data and associated information in a near real-time environment. This paper describes the satellite data relay system currently utilized by the Telemetry Data Center at Patuxent River, Maryland and the corresponding remote receiving site, and discusses the performance of this system.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / Phillips Laboratory's Space Experiments Directorate (PL/SX) is operating and upgrading the laboratory's premier transportable satellite tracking station, the Mobile Ground Tracking Station (MGTS) program. MGTS supports orbital, suborbital, and aircraft missions as a range system capable of processing and recording multiple data streams. MGTS receives, processes, displays, and records satellite state-of-health data, infrared images in a variety of wavelengths, video data, and state vector solutions based on IR returns from the Miniature Sensor Technology Integration (MSTI) satellite program. The program has began in 1990 under BMDO sponsorship, with the intent to supplement existing test ranges with more flexibility in range operations. Wyle Laboratories and Systems Engineering and Management Company (SEMCO) provided the technical expertise necessary to create the first MGTS system. Autonomy and off-road capability were critical design factors, since some of the operations envisioned require deployment to remote or hostile field locations. Since inception, MGTS has supported the Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric Projectile (LEAP) sub-orbital missions, the MSTI satellite program, and Air Force wargame demonstrations. In pursuit of these missions, MGTS has deployed to White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), NM; Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC), Edwards AFB, CA; Vandenberg AFB, CA; Falcon AFB, CO; and NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility, VA, to receive critical mission telemetry data conforming to both IRIG and SGLS standards. This paper will describe the evolution of the MGTS program, current hardware configurations and past and future mission scenarios for the MGTS team.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / In its simplest form an automaton can be considered a set of inputs, a process, and a set of outputs. Certainly telemetry can be thought of in this way as well. Automata theory is a cross between mathematics and computer science which considers how to precisely define the inputs, the outputs, and the process of translating the one into the other. The input to an automaton can be described using a formal grammar. Two standard bit stream encodings, PCM matrices and MIL-STD-1553, are described using grammars. An example of how a grammar can be used to decode a bit stream is given. Further, ambiguity and complexity of bit stream encodings are discussed in the context of grammars. It is thus illustrated how grammars can be used to cleanly define and decode telemetry bit streams.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Instrumentation antennas installed on missiles and airborne targets are required to be tested and certified prior to flight. The antenna coupler is a means of certifying that the antenna is in proper working condition prior to deployment, as damage to the antennas may have occurred during transportation or installation. This coupler also provides a low cost means to evaluate and monitor the antenna throughout the various stages of design and assembly. These antennas can contain arrays for telemetry, beacon tracking, global positioning systems and flight termination. A failure by any one of these arrays could result in the loss of data or improper operation of the flight vehicle. Description of the design and function of antenna couplers will be discussed.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / The remote sensing industry is experiencing an unprecedented rush of activity to deploy commercial and scientific satellites. NASA and its international partners are leading the scientific charge with The Earth Observation System (EOS) and the International Space Station Alpha (ISSA). Additionally, there are at least ten countries promoting scientific/commercial remote sensing satellite programs. Within the United States, commercial initiatives are being under taken by a number of companies including Computer Technology Associates, Inc., EarthWatch, Inc., Space Imaging, Inc., Orbital Imaging Corporation and TRW, Inc. This activity is due to factors including: technological advances which have lead to significant reductions in the costs to build and deploy satellites; an awareness of the importance of understanding human impact on the ecosystem; and a desire to collect and sell data some believe will be worth $1.5 billion (USD) per year within five years. The success and usefulness of these initiatives, both scientific and commercial, depends largely on the ease and cost of providing remotely sensed data to value added resellers and end-users. A number of these spacecraft will provide an interface directly to users. To provide these data to the largest possible user base, ground station equipment must be affordable and the data must be distributed in a timely manner (meaning seconds or minutes, not days) over commercial network and communications equipment. TSI TelSys, Inc. is developing ground station equipment that will perform both traditional telemetry processing and the bridging and routing functions required to seamlessly interface commercial local- and wide-area networks and satellite communication networks. These products are based on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) components and pipelined, multi-processing architectures. This paper describes TelSys’ product family and its envisioned use within a ground station.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) Science Operations Center at UC Berkeley was recently successful in implementing an automated monitoring system that allowed reduced operations staffing from 24 hours per day to 9 hours per day. The payload safety is monitored exclusively by artificial intelligence (AI) telemetry-processing systems for 16 hours per day. At launch, the EUVE Science Operations Center was staffed and operated as a typical satellite control center, receiving real-time and tape recorder data 24 hours per day. From September 1993 through February 1995, EUVE science operations were redesigned in a phased, low-cost approach. A key factor in the implementation was to utilize existing personnel in new roles through additional training and reorganization. Through- out this period, EUVE guest observers and science data collection were unaffected by the transition in science operations. This paper describes the original and actual implementation plan, staffing phases, and cost savings for this project. We present the lessons learned in the successful transition from three-shift to one-shift operations.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The technology growth in the Aerospace industry, as manifested and embodied in the current fighter technology, presents many challenges in the area of flight test and data processing. Past papers have delineated the concepts brought to bear in the design and implementation of the AFFTC’s latest generation of telemetry data systems in the Advanced Data Acquisition and Processing System (ADAPS) program. The current deployed system incorporates the planned approach of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) and government-off-the-shelf (GOTS) elements as basic to the system solution. The state of the program has advanced through full development, delivery and performance testing. The system is currently deployed in support of flight testing at Edwards AFB. This paper will present the status of the program.