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 / 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 27-30, 1997 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The international space community, including National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), European Space Agency (ESA), Japanese National Space Agency (NASDA) and others, are committed to using the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) recommendations for low earth orbiting satellites. With the advent of the CCSDS standards and the availability of direct broadcast data from a number of current and future spacecraft, a large number of users could have access to earth science data. However, to allow for the largest possible user base, the cost of processing this data must be as low as possible. By utilizing Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC), pipelined data processing, and advanced software development technology and tools, highly integrated CCSDS data processing can be attained in a single desktop system. This paper describes a prototype desktop system based on the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus that performs CCSDS standard frame synchronization, bit transition density decoding, Cyclical Redundancy Check (CRC) error checking, Reed-Solomon decoding, data unit sorting, packet extraction, annotation and other CCSDS service processing. Also discussed is software technology used to increase the flexibility and usability of the desktop system. The reproduction cost for the system described is less than 1/8th the current cost of commercially available CCSDS data processing systems.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / This paper will provide details on planned upgrades to the Advanced Data Acquisition and Processing System (ADAPS) Real-Time / Post Flight Processing (RT/PFP) telemetry processor. The ADAPS RT/PFP is used to process real-time telemetry at the Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC). The ADAPS telemetry processor is based on the L3 Communications O/S90 telemetry pre-processing system. New modifications to the ADAPS telemetry processor will provide increased processing capability, increased data throughput, and higher reliability.

ITC/USA 2011 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Seventh Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2011 / Bally's Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper presents three telemetry techniques demonstrated on an affordable precision mortar that allowed the guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) system to be effectively analyzed. The first is a technique for the real-time integration and extraction of GPS data into a sensor telemetry stream. The second is a method for increasing telemetry bandwidth by saving a short period of high rate data and then broadcasting it over the rest of the flight test. Lastly, I present an on-board data storage implementation using a MicroSD card.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Earth Observing System-AM (EOS-AM) spacecraft, the first in a series of spacecraft for the EOS, is scheduled for launch in June of 1998. This spacecraft will carry high resolution instruments capable of generating large volumes of earth science data at rates up to 150 Mbps. Data will be transmitted in a packet format based upon the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) Advanced Orbiting Systems (AOS) recommendations. The Data Systems Technology Division (DSTD) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has developed a set of high performance CCSDS return-link processing systems to support testing and verification of the EOS-AM spacecraft. These CCSDS processing systems use Versa Module Eurocard bus (VMEBus) Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI)-based processing modules developed for the EOS ground segment to acquire and handle the high rate EOS data. Functions performed by these systems include frame synchronization, Reed-Solomon error correction, fill frame removal, virtual channel sorting, packet service processing, and data quality accounting. The first of the systems was delivered in October 1994 to support testing of the onboard formatting equipment. The second and third systems, delivered in April 1995, support spacecraft checkout and verification. This paper will describe the function and implementation of these systems.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has developed a set of functional telemetry processing components based upon Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) and Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC). These components provide a framework for the assembly of telemetry data ground systems for space projects such as the Earth Observing System (EOS) and the Small Explorer (SMEX) mission series. Implementation of the ground systems for such projects using a common set of functional components has obvious cost benefits in both systems development and maintenance. Given the existence of these components, the next logical step is to utilize a similar approach and create a set of reusable software components for the implementation of telemetry data system monitoring and control functions. This paper describes a generalized set of software components, called the Telemetry Processing Control Environment (TPCE), which has been developed to fulfil this need. This combination of hardware and software components enables the rapid development of flexible, cost-effective telemetry processing systems capable of meeting the performance requirements facing NASA in the coming decade.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1998 / Town & Country Resort Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / The Space Sensing & Vehicle Control Branch of the Air Force Research Laboratory and Voss Scientific, Albuquerque, NM, are developing an advanced PC and COTS-based satellite telemetry processing, analysis and display system known as the PC-Satellite Telemetry Server (PC-STS). This program grew out of a need to develop less expensive, more capable, more flexible, and expandable solutions to the satellite telemetry analysis requirements of the Air Force. Any new system must employ industry standard, open architecture, network and database protocols allowing for easy growth and migration to new technologies, as they become available. Thus, the PC-STS will run on standard personal computers and the Windows NT operating system. The focus of this work and this paper is the Telemetry Server component, and in particular, the custom-built decommutation board. The decommution board will be capable of processing frame formatted and CCSDS packet telemetry. It will be capable of fully decommutating telemetry data, converting raw data to engineering units, and providing this data to the Telemetry Server host. Time tagged engineering units or minor frames of telemetry will be transmitted to the Telemetry Server processor via on-board memory buffers. The decom board uses the PCI bus, programmable DSPs, considerable on-board memory, and a SCSI bus for local archiving. This paper presents the general architecture of the PC-STS, and discusses specific design considerations. These include trade-offs made during the design of the board’s hardware and software, operational specifications, and graphical user interfaces to program, monitor, and control the board.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Desktop Processors (IBM PC, PC-compatible, and Macintosh) have made a major impact on how the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD}, Patuxent River engineering community performs their work in aircraft weapons tests. The personal processors are utilized by the flight-test engineers not only for report preparation, but also for post-flight Engineering Unit (EU) data reduction and analysis. Present day requirements direct a need for improved post-flight data handling than those of the past. These requirements are driven by the need to analyze all the vehicle's parameters prior to the succeeding test flight, and to generate test reports in a more cost effective and timely manner. This paper defines the post-flight data distribution system at NAWCAD, Patuxent River, explains how these tasks were handled in the past, and the development of a real-time data storage designed approach for post-flight data handling. This engineering design is then described explaining how it sets the precedence for NAWCAD, Patuxent River's future plans; and how it provides the flight-test engineer with the test vehicle's EU data immediately available post-flight at his desktop processor.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The architecture and capabilities of Navy Flight Test’s latest generation telemetry system are described. The Real-time Telemetry Processing System (RTPS) is the name ascribed to successive systems at the Patuxent River Navy Flight Test complex since 1973. This version of the system, dubbed RTPS IV, and the associated facility improvements will enable the Navy to support the next generation military fighter, the Joint Strike Fighter, and every other ongoing and planned Navy test program.