ABOUT THE COLLECTION

The International Telemetering Conference/USA (ITC/USA) is dedicated to the promotion and stimulation of technical growth in telemetering and its allied arts and sciences. It is the premier annual forum and technical exhibition providing telemetry specific short courses, technical papers from professionals and students, and exhibits of the industry’s leading companies. ITC/USA is sponsored by the International Foundation for Telemetering (IFT), a non-profit corporation dedicated to serving the technical and professional interests of the telemetering community.

This collection contains the proceedings of the fiftieth International Telemetering Conference, October 20-23, 2014. The conference, sponsored by the International Foundation for Telemetering, was held at the Town and Country Resort & Convention Center in San Diego, California.


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Recent Submissions

  • International Telemetering Conference Proceedings, Volume 50 (2014)

    International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10
  • iNET Preamble Detector Performance in the Presence of Multipath Interference

    Rice, Michael; McMurdie, Andrew; Perrins, Eric; Brigham Young University; University of Kansas (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    The iNET preamble can be used to estimate the frequency offset and multipath channel in an aeronautical telemetry link. To accomplish this, the receiver must be able to identify the start of the preamble within the received data stream in the presence of uncompensated frequency offset and unknown multipath channel. In this paper, we explore the performance of seven candidate preamble detectors in the presence of a frequency offset and over multipath channels typically encountered in aeronautical telemetry. A non-coherent post-detection integration (NCPDI) detector considered in this paper demonstrates the best detection performance for a reduced complexity.
  • iNET System Manager

    Noonan, Patrick J.; Newton, Todd A.; Willden, Gregory C.; Grace, Thomas B.; Malatesta, William A.; Southwest Research Institute; Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    Network-based telemetry systems have unprecedented amounts of flexibility due to the ability to monitor, control, configure, coordinate, and visualize the operations of the flight test system. As a result of this flexibility, multiple tests can be conducted in a single flight; all it takes is reconfiguration of portions of the system. However, management of such a dynamic system is a complex task. As such, the integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) Program is currently developing a System Manager application to provide a model for coordinated management of networked telemetry. The System Manager provides a user application for monitoring, controlling, configuring, coordinating, and visualizing the operations of the Telemetry Network System (TmNS) network. This paper describes the key requirements, capabilities, and development approach of the System Manager.
  • Initial iNET RF Networking Testing

    Timme, M. Wayne; Newton, Todd A.; Moodie, Myron L.; Abbott, Ben A.; Grace, Thomas B.; Southwest Research Institute; Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    One of the core philosophies of the integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) project is to leverage standard networking technologies whenever possible to both reduce development cost and to allow standard networking applications to function properly. This also provides the best long-term scalability to new unforeseen applications much as the Internet has grown through its open standards. Unfortunately, the Radio Frequency (RF) channel characteristics do not fully lend themselves to the typical physical layer approaches utilized by Internet Protocol (IP) technologies. The iNET project is developing the Telemetry Network System (TmNS) RF Network to provide a flexible two-way IP telemetry capability. The Developmental Flight Test (DFT) phase is currently under way to perform initial flight testing of the RF Network. This paper provides an overview of the planned RF network testing and the expected results. Current results from flight testing will be presented at the conference.
  • Initial iNET TA Networking Testing

    Newton, Todd A.; Timme, M. Wayne; Abbott, Ben A.; Grace, Thomas B.; Malatesta, William A.; Southwest Research Institute; Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    One of the core philosophies of the integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) project is to leverage standard networking technologies whenever possible to reduce development cost and to allow standard networking applications to function. This also provides the best long-term scalability to new unforeseen applications much as the Internet has grown through its open standards. The Developmental Flight Test phase is currently under way to perform initial flight testing of the Test Article (TA) Network. This paper provides an overview of the planned TA Network Testing and the expected results. Current results from flight testing will be presented at the conference.
  • C Band Telemetry at Airbus Flight Test Centre

    Fréaud, Gilles; Airbus (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    Airbus is authorized to use S-band for Telemetry transmission until 2015. In October 2011, the decision was taken to move to C-band in 2013, to cope with Airbus development aircraft planning. The objective was a real challenge for 2 main reasons: C-band channel was not characterized in Airbus transmission environment and it was necessary to validate the propagation performance for Flight Tests uses. The selected solution is based on Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM) modulation. There was no existing solution so it has led the Airbus Test Centre to drive the development of its own C Band solution. C-band telemetry at Airbus has been tested and evaluated in flight from April 2012. The first goal was to check the coverage and the impact of the bad weather condition. Besides, it was necessary to characterize the channel to choose the optimised parameters for the waveform in the Toulouse Blagnac environment. This selection of parameters allows the high quality and increased data rate required for Airbus Telemetry to be reached. The test results consolidated the choice of a COFDM modulation, when given the high sensitivity to multipath of usual Frequency Modulation in the airport environment full of buildings and aircrafts. Moreover, it has been possible to reach a similar quality to the S-band telemetry systems, thanks to a fine tuning of the waveform parameters, and tracking system. Deployment of the system by modifying 8 reception antennas and 12 development aircrafts was done over a span of 4 weeks in January 2014. No impact on Airbus A350 certification campaign occurred due to close collaboration with Flight Test Operations. The new Telemetry system enables an increase of telemetry capabilities in the future, especially the data throughput, simplified remote control and monitoring. This experience is an opportunity to set up a new standard.
  • FMCW Subsurface Microwave Imaging with Hexagonal Antenna Arrays

    Lee, Hua; Radzicki, Vincent R.; University of California, Santa Barbara (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) imaging is typically conducted in the pulse-echo mono-static format with a simple CW pulse as the probing signal. Recently, the data-acquisition hardware has been extended to the use of linear multi-element arrays. This paper presents an advanced GPR imaging system with FMCW probing waveforms, with a seven-element hexagonal array and software-defined data-acquisition hardware. The use of FMCW probing signals is for the optimization of the information contents of the returned waveforms. The utilization of the hexagonal unit is to produce sub-images with direction-independent resolution capability. In this paper, mathematical analysis, system modeling, field experiments, and image reconstruction are included to illustrate the performance and capability of the engineering concepts.
  • Generalized Spatial Modulation with Correlated Antennas in Rayleigh Fading Channels

    Borah, Deva K.; Sun, Yafei; New Mexico State University (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    Spatial modulation (SM) is a transmission scheme where only one transmit antenna is active at any time instant. It thus reduces interchannel interference (ICI) and receiver complexity over traditional multi-antenna systems. However, the spectral efficiency of SM is low. To improve the spectral efficiency, generalized spatial modulation (GSM) can be used. In this paper, we propose to apply the Alamouti technique with GSM for correlated antennas, and show that the proposed approach provides significant improvement over conventional SM and GSM. Our study also shows the importance of bit-to-antenna mappings and their roles on the selection of appropriate correlated antennas.
  • Trade-offs of Antenna Fabrication Techniques

    Ryken, Marv; Microwave Subsystems, Inc. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    This paper addresses the future military munitions' system requirements for antennas in terms of the existing versus new fabrication technology. The antenna requirements of the future smart munitions will be GPS for precision guidance and TM for system performance testing. The environmental requirements remain the same; large temperature operating range with operation at high temperatures and high shock capable. As usual, the munitions are getting smaller, frequency bandwidth is getting larger, and the cost of the antennas must be minimized in production quantities. In particular this paper compares the existing antenna fabrication technology of Teflon based dielectric printed circuits versus multilayer alumina in the green state, a technology that has been perfected for fabricating microwave integrated circuits (MIC's). The trade-offs that will be addressed are temperature, shock, cost, tunability, loss, size, dielectric constant, and frequency bandwidth. There has been a significant effort to miniaturize the GPS and TM antenna using higher dielectric constant materials. The most popular direction of this effort has been to use ceramic impregnated Teflon. The ultimate temperature performance is the material with a dielectric constant around 2 since this material exhibits a very low coefficient of change with temperature. Materials are available with nominal dielectric constants of 6 and 10 to reduce the size of the antenna but the coefficient of change with temperature is very large and leaves these materials marginal for military temperature ranges. There have also been two other problems with Teflon based printed circuit boards, forming and bonding the boards in a 3D shape and homogeneity of the dielectric constant in the board and after bonding. These problems usually make tuning a requirement and drive the cost of antenna fabrication up. There has been a revolution in MIC's. The circuits are now being made with multiple layers of ceramic (alumina) with interlayer conductive connections and a nominal dielectric constant of 10. The layers are formed in the green state and fired at high temperature and the resulting alumina substrate has a very low coefficient of change with temperature and low loss. Since this procedure is now beyond development, the cost is low and the volume capability is high. Another significant point is that the part can be any shape since the substrate is done in the green state (formable) and then fired.
  • Performance Evaluation of Low Density Parity Check Forward Error Correction in an Aeronautical Flight Environment

    Temple, Kip; Edwards Air Force Base (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    In some flight test scenarios the telemetry link is noise limited at long slant ranges or during signal fade events caused by antenna pattern nulls. In these situations, a mitigation technique such as forward error correction (FEC) can add several decibels to the link margin. The particular FEC code discussed in this paper is a variant of a low-density parity check (LDPC) code and is coupled with SOQPSK modulation in the hardware tested. This paper will briefly cover lab testing of the flight-ready hardware then present flight test results comparing a baseline uncoded telemetry link with a LDPC-coded telemetry link. This is the first known test dedicated to this specific FEC code in a real-world test environment with flight profile tailored to assess the viability of an LDPC-coded telemetry link.
  • Security Architecture for Telemetry Networks

    Dean, Richard; Moazzami, Farzad; Astatke, Yacob; Moten, Daryl; Jambureskan, Sekaran; Morgan State University (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    This paper develops a Security Architecture for a network of telemetry networks as is envisioned for future telemetry systems. We show a model for an aggregation of Test Centers as might be deployed for the envisioned network telemetry. We build a security architecture grounded in best practices for security design as captured in the NIST family of standards and guidelines captured in the SANS 20 critical controls.
  • A Duel Compression Ethernet Camera Solution for Airborne Applications

    Willis, Stephen; Langer, Bernd; Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions; Kappa Aptronics (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    Camera technology is now ubiquitous with smartphones, laptops, automotive and industrial applications frequently utilizing high resolution imagine sensors. Increasingly there is a demand for high-definition cameras in the aerospace market - however, such cameras must have several considerations that do not apply to average consumer use including high reliability and being ruggedized for harsh environments. A significant issue is managing the large volumes of data that one or more HD cameras produce. One method of addressing this issue is to use compression algorithms that reduce video bandwidth. This can be achieved with dedicated compression units or modules within data acquisition systems. For flight test applications it is important that data from cameras is available for telemetry and coherently synchronized while also being available for storage. Ideally the data in the telemetry steam should be highly compressed to preserve downlink bandwidth while the recorded data is lightly compressed to provide maximum quality for onboard/ post flight analysis. This paper discusses the requirements for airborne applications and presents an innovative solution using Ethernet cameras with integrated compression that outputs two steams of data. This removes the need for dedicated video and compression units while offering all the features of such including switching camera sources and optimized video streams.
  • Comparing Packet Fill Strategies in Ethernet-Based Data Acquisition Systems

    Penna, Sérgio D.; EMBRAER Flight Test Instrumentation (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    Ethernet-based data acquisition systems are becoming more and more common in the Flight Test Instrumentation environment. Digitized analog sensor output and various other types of digital data is captured and inserted into Ethernet packets using a "packet fill" strategy that in general is under control of the user. This paper discuss and compares two strategies "FILL-TO-TIME" and "FILL-TO- SIZE" for the acquisition of ARINC-429 digital data bus.
  • Enhancing Security in Telemetry Post-Processing Environments with Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM)

    Kaibjian, Jeff; Hewlett Packard (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    While great strides have been made in recent years by government agencies in deploying proactive network security tools, the federal government as a whole desires to continue to press the state of the art in protecting its IT infrastructure. To this end, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has created the Continuous Diagnostic and Mitigation (CDM) program [1] (also known as Continuous Monitoring, CM). It strives to establish a technology framework whereby agency federal government IT networks can be continuously monitored for threats and vulnerabilities, providing an analysis and correlation capability that will enable entities to better evaluate risk. It also defines a hierarchical dash-boarding capability that facilitates both aggregation and communication of each agency's network health status into abstracted levels of summary so the federal system as a whole can be better evaluate their IT security posture. Going forward, these technologies will dramatically impact all government agencies, the Department of Defense (DOD), and commercial entities.
  • Moving Data Analysis into the Acquisition Hardware

    Buckley, Dave; Curtiss-Wright (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    Data acquisition for flight test is typically handled by dedicated hardware which performs specific functions and targets specific interfaces and buses. Through the use of an FPGA state machine based design approach, performance and robustness can be guaranteed. Up to now sufficient flexibility has been provided by allowing the user to configure the hardware depending on the particular application. However by allowing custom algorithms to be run on the data acquisition hardware, far greater control and flexibility can be offered to the flight test engineer. As the volume of the acquired data increases, this extra control can be used to vastly reduce the amount of data to be recorded or telemetered. Also real-time analysis of test points can now be done where post processing would previously have been required. This paper examines examples of data acquisition, recording and processing and investigates where data reduction and time savings can be achieved by enabling the flight test engineer to run his own algorithms on the hardware.
  • Energy Efficient Water-Filling Algorithm for MIMO-OFDMA Cellular System

    Kassa, Hailu Belay; Mariam, Dereje H.; Moazzami, Farzad; Astatke, Yacob; Addis Ababa University; Morgan State University (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    In this work we evaluated the performance of different water filling algorithms. We have selected four power allocation algorithms: Conventional water-filling (CWF), Constant power water-filling, Inverse Water-filling (IWF), and Adaptive Iterative Water-Filling (AIWF) algorithms. Capacity is the performance metric we used to compare the above algorithms by taking the optimality of transmission power allocation to each sub-channel into account. The power allocation can be calculated with a reference of the water level value that has different approaches for different algorithms. The water level can either be fixed once it is found, or it may be adaptive or different for different sub-channels. Hence, the results show that the adaptive iterative water filling (AIWF) algorithm has a better effect on the performance of MIMO-OFDM system by allocating power adaptively.
  • History and Evolution of Metadata Standards for the FTI Community

    Cooke, Alan; Curtiss-Wright (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    The paper discusses the history and background of metadata standards for the FTI community over the last 20 years and speculates on how they may develop in the future. It starts by highlighting the deficiencies of proprietary formats and the resulting problems. It then discusses the characteristics and features of specific industry standard metadata descriptions such as TMATS, iHAL, MDL and XidML in addition to their levels of maturity. The attributes of what constitutes a fully mature FTI metadata standard is then discussed. It is suggested that any standard must serve at least two functions, Configuration and Validation, and outlines what exactly each means. Finally, it is argued that there is now a significant level of convergence and consensus in both the scope and application of metadata, and in the associated concept of operations (ConOps). The details of this Concept of Operations are then discussed along with suggestions as to how this may evolve in the coming years.
  • Protocol Analysis for Networked Acquirement System

    Lu, Chun; Song, Jian; Beijing Zoweetech Ltd. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    This paper analyzed protocols may be used in each layer in networked telemetry systems, and also presents some deeper researches of the advantages of using synchronous time-division for the physical layer of a networked telemetry system.
  • Using TENA to Enable Next Generation Range Control and Data Distribution

    Schmidt, Andrew; Wigent, Mark A.; Leidos (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    There is a need for a capability that enables setup and execution of tests, including integration of new instrumentation into the T&E range environment more rapidly and reliably than with existing methods, and with reduced cost and effort. Moreover, because individual ranges have developed approaches to range control and data distribution which are often range-specific and which call for significant interface development when integrating new instrumentation and systems to the range environment, there is a need to develop a range control and data distribution mechanism that can be reused throughout the T&E community. The purpose of the Next Generation Range Control and Data Distribution (NGRC&DD) project, which is funded by the Test Resource Management Center's (TRMC) Central Test and Evaluation Investment Program (CTEIP), is to develop a capability that modernizes and enhances system control and data distribution in DoD ranges. The Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA) is an underlying technology used by NGRC&DD. Migrating to the TENA middleware requires a fundamental reexamination of what data is produced and how it is distributed. TENA offers some tools and mechanisms for ranges that are advantageous relative to traditional methods of data dissemination as well as other versions of middleware available to the community.
  • Application of TENA in Real-Time Wireless Flight Test Engineering with Tablet Support

    Cornelius, Harold; Treakle, Thomas; TENA in Resource Constrained Environments (TRCE) (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2014-10)
    Flight line checkout of aircraft and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) is a necessary part of Test Range operations. Checkout systems have been designed to support the Flight Test Engineer (FTE) and aircraft technicians to validate the operations of the aircraft instrumentation systems and to help in troubleshooting problems. Current systems in use by the FTE include using range assets, such as range Telemetry Receiving system, and even home built systems. One system used at Edwards Flight Test Center is called the Instrumentation Ground Support Units (IGSU) or "Taco Carts", a system that contains the basic elements of a telemetry ground system that also has the additional capability to connect directly to the aircraft. This presentation shows advancement prototypes that enable the FTE access to modern technologies that will provide efficiencies using wireless networks, tablets and the Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA) TENA through activities developed as part of the TENA in Resource Constrained Environments (TRCE) project.

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