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 thirtieth International Telemetering Conference, October 17-20, 1994. The conference, sponsored by the International Foundation for Telemetering, was held at the Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center in San Diego, California.


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Recent Submissions

  • International Telemetering Conference Proceedings, Volume 30 (1994)

    International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10
  • Advancements in Subminiature Telemetry Technology

    Keller, G. Edward, Jr.; Murphey, Robert A.; Eglin Air Force Base (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    This paper describes the progress made by the Wright Laboratory Armament Directorate Instrumentation Technology Branch in developing Subminiature Instrumentation Technologies. These advancements will be explained relative to the overall scope of the Subminiature Instrumentation efforts. The goal of these efforts is a DOD depot capability to provide low cost, non-intrusive telemetry instrumentation for any weapon system. The concept of developing a "chip-set" of monolithic modules to allow quick design and fabrication of a specific telemetry package, has been implemented with the development of subminiature telemetry. Today, the telemetry package with 128 digital and 64 analog channels, 200kbs up to 10Mbs data rates, with programmable functions, is approximately 2 inches X 2 inches X .25 inches and weighs about 50 grams. Encryption is available and provisions are being made to transmit video in the same module. This technology is being pursued as the standard for all air-to-air and air-to-ground telemetry systems.
  • The Universal Signal Conditioning Amplifier

    Medelius, Pedro J.; Hallberg, Carl; Larson, William E.; Becker, Dean; I-NET, Inc.; NASA; Loral Test & Information Systems (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    A state-of-the-art instrumentation amplifier capable of being used with most types of transducers has recently been developed at the Kennedy Space Center. This Universal Signal Conditioning Amplifier (USCA) can eliminate costly measurement setup time and troubleshooting, improve system reliability, and provide more accurate data than conventional amplifiers. The USCA can configure itself for maximum resolution and accuracy based on information read from a RAM chip attached to each transducer. Excitation voltages or currents are also automatically configured. The amplifier uses both analog and digital state-of-the-art technology with analog-to-digital conversion performed in the early stages to minimize errors introduced by offset and gain drifts in the analog components. A dynamic temperature compensation scheme has been designed to achieve and maintain 12-bit accuracy of the amplifier from 0 to 70E C. The digital signal processing section allows the implementation of digital filters up to 511th order. The amplifier can also perform real-time linearizations up to fourth order while processing data at a rate of 23,438 samples per second (23.438 kS/s). Both digital and analog outputs are available from the amplifier.
  • Network Configuration for Range Interconnectivity

    Douglas, Steven R.; Naval Warfare Assessment Division (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    A demonstration of near real-time performance assessment for the Program Executive Officer for Cruise Missiles Project and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Cruise Test Directorate, PEO(CU)-CT, was conducted between 22 March 1994 through 4 May 1994. The demonstration involved the temporary installation of a portable TOMAHAWK telemetry recording and telecommunications capability at the Air Force Development Test Center range at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida and a receiving telecommunications capability at the Naval Warfare Assessment Division (NWAD), Corona, California. The system was successfully used on 4 May 1994 to record TOMAHAWK missile telemetry data in real-time in support of Operational Test Launch (OTL)-163 and to transfer that data to the weapons system performance analysts at NWAD in near real-time. The one hour and three minutes of flight data was compressed in real-time as it was recorded, then, after completion of the flight, the data was transferred to NWAD in about 12 minutes using the switched 56 kbps network. Additional transfers using the Defense Commercial Telecommunications Network (DCTN) were also conducted. All transfers were secured using ethernet encryptors. The data was processed by both the NWAD telemetry ground station and the TOMAHAWK workstation complex. This paper quantifies the results and documents the lessons learned from this demonstration and proposes a standardized system design for possible implementation at TOMAHAWK test range sites in the future. A position is taken that for situations where the remote site (e.g. other range or data analysis site) does not exercise direct operational control over the test/host range, near real-time data relay solutions are not only as adequate, but in many cases are preferable to real-time solutions.
  • The Common Airborne Instrumentation System Program Management Overview

    Brown, Thomas R., Jr.; Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Division (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    The Department of Defense, through a Tri-Service Program Office, is developing the Common Airborne Instrumentation System (CAIS) to promote standardization, commonality, and interoperability among aircraft test instrumentation systems. The advent of CAIS will change how the DoD test community conducts business. The CAIS program will allow aircraft test and evaluation facilities to utilize common airborne systems, ground support equipment, and technical knowledge for airborne instrumentation systems. The CAIS Program Office will conduct requirements analyses, manage system upgrades, and provide full life cycle support for this system. It is initiating several requirements contracts to provide direct ordering opportunities for DoD users to easily procure defined test instrumentation hardware. The program office will provide configuration management, inventory control, maintenance support, system integration, engineering support, and software management. In addition, it will continue to enhance the current system and develop new items to meet future requirements. Where existing equipment provides added benefit, this equipment may be added to the official CAIS family.
  • Planned Evolution of Range Telemetry and Communications into the Public Data Network

    Erdahl, Mike; Loral Test & Information Systems (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    The area of range telemetry and communications has been under budget constraints and interoperability enhancement requirements for some time. The near-term onslaught of multimedia communications offerings by telephony and communications companies is certain to cause range engineering personnel to conduct extensive research and possibly make numerous decisions on procurements and technologies before standards are finalized. This paper will address a low-risk migration path for range telemetry to the new multimedia communications for ranges based on current capabilities. This migration path has an end goal of positioning the ranges to take advantage of future multimedia communications as they become available, while leveraging off of current products and procurements, without a major investment.
  • Portable Airborne Digital Data System Recorder

    Harris, Kevin E.; Veda Incorporated (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    Veda Incorporated has developed an airborne instrumentation recorder for a major commercial aircraft manufacturer. The recorder was developed for use in the aircraft company's Portable Airborne Digital Data System (PADDS), a small scale data acquisition and monitor system used for flight testing. The recorder is designed around an off-the-shelf 8mm tape drive, the Exabyte 8505. It records asynchronous, variable-rate data in a proprietary 24-bit recording format, and allows the data to be played back in real time. Its RS-422 control interface is designed to imitate the recorder used in the company's large scale data acquisition system, the Ampex DCRSi-II. Special provisions allow it to withstand the environment of an airplane's EE bay.
  • A Dielectric Resonator Stabilized Frequency Modulation Oscillator in the S-Band

    Banghua, Zhou; Mingsheng, Huang; Xinan Electronic Engineering Institute (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    With the development of the airborne telemetry technique, it will be demanded that the transmitting sets on the missiles are more reliable and smaller. A frequency modulation (FM) oscillator stabilized with a dielectric resonator (DR), which can operates in the S-band directly, is presented. The FM oscillator is of simple circuit, reliable operation in the stabilization, small size, light weight and low cost. It will have a certain prospect of application in the airborne telemetry transmitting sets.
  • Deterministic Distribution of Telemetry and Other Replicated Information

    Gustin, Thomas W.; SYSTRAN Corp. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    Discover how it is now possible to memory-link all man-in-the-loop and machine-in-the-loop elements, as global resources that share information at memory-access speeds, to provide a unified system paradigm that avows: "the data is there, on time, every time." Regardless of configuration, if your past, present, or future system consists of more than one computer, and it interactively mixes information sources and destinations (e.g. Telemetry data streams, I/O interfaces, information processors, etc.) to achieve a highly integrated system, then the critical path to real-time success mandates a high performance, reliable, and deterministic communications methodology. This softwareless, future technology is already successfully sharing information in other real-time markets and applications, and is ready for more challenging applications.
  • Acquisition and Near Real-Time Display of Multispectral Test Data from Widely Separated Test Sites

    Donlan, Brian; Sabo, Frank; Science Applications International Corporation (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    As modern weapons grow more sophisticated and capable of operating autonomously, the challenge of testing these weapons has also grown more complex. Seekers may be multispectral and must be able to overcome threat countermeasures. To effectively analyze the performance of these weapons, time-correlated test data must be efficiently, simultaneously acquired from both the weapons' internal busses and from the threat countermeasures' internal communication busses, often in a "live fire" environment. The test data must be transmitted to a central processing station where test personnel may immediately analyze the performance of the weapon with the assistance of scientific visualization techniques. In addition, the data must be captured on permanent media for future playback and more detailed analysis. One solution is to link the test article, threat countermeasures and other test support resources through an Integrated Telemetry System (ITS). Instrumentation to acquire high-speed test data is installed in data collection vans that are remotely located in the vicinity of the article under test or in the vicinity of the threat countermeasures systems or test support resources. The remote vans will be interconnected and linked to a control van which provides a centralized test control and monitoring point. Remote Data Formatter (RDF) instrumentation units, located in the remote vans, can acquire data from and control seekers, sensors, emission sources or other equipment located in or near the remote vans. The RDF units can also format the data for transmission to the control van via either fiber optic or microwave radio links. The data transmitted from multiple remote vans is received by Real-time Data Processing System (RTPS) units located in the control van for merging, processing and recording. Some of the processed data can be transferred to a Host Processing System (HPS) where it can be displayed on color graphic workstations. The control van's HPS workstations provide user-friendly displays and menus for test setup and control. Both the remote and control vans are equipped with secure digital communication systems capable of supporting compressed digital video, audio, high-speed instrumentation data and an Ethernet computer network.
  • Space Tracking Systems/ Options Study

    Grelck, John; Ehrsam, Eldon; Means, James A. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    This paper presents the findings of the Space Tracking Systems/Options Study (STS/OS) and indicates its impact on the telemetering community. The STS/OS was commissioned by Air Force Test & Evaluation (AF/TE) to develop a long range plan (vision and roadmap) for the AF Test & Evaluation (T&E) community to ensure affordable capabilities (telemetry, tracking and commanding) for the future (2003-2008). The study was conducted by the Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC), Space & Missile Systems Center (SMC), Detachment 9, at Vandenberg AFB (VAFB), with support from the primary AFMC T&E centers, the Air Force Operational Test & Evaluation Command (AFOTEC), and the Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). Both "open air" aeronautical and astronautical test needs were considered. The study solicited requirements for existing and future programs, extrapolated existing and planned test capabilities out into the future, then compared the two to identify future shortfalls in capabilities and specific actions that are necessary to insure that the future program needs can be met. Three critical types of testing were identified that cannot be satisfied with existing or planned instrumentation. These are: large area testing (LAT), over the horizon testing (OTH), and space weapons testing (SWT). A major deficiency was also uncovered in end game scoring for air and space intercepts, where inadequate capability exists to perform the required vector miss-distance measurement. This paper is important to the telemetering community because it identifies the Global Positioning System (GPS) as the primary time space position information (TSPI) system for all future open air testing. GPS provides a passive capability that permits each vehicle to determine its own precise TSPI. Means must be provided, however, for the vehicle to relay its position to the appropriate range control center. The paper shows that the problems with down linking telemetry, aircraft buss data, digital audio, digital video, and TSPI collectively represent the need for a very capable datalink. Likewise, the need to uplink commands, synthetic targets, synthetic backgrounds, and target control information also represents the need for a very capable datalink. With its extensive expertise in RF linkages, the telemetering community is ideally suited to address this need for a robust datalink for the future of T&E.
  • Wideband FM Telemetry Application

    Neuens, Jim; Veda Incorporated (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    A Wideband FM Telemetry System was developed by Veda Incorporated and Boeing Commercial Airplane. This system supports Boeing 777 flight testing and will support future Boeing test efforts. This is an upgrade to the system previously used by Boeing for testing other planes. The design interfaces to the new Boeing Data Acquisition and Analysis systems and provides 15 Megabits per second Telemetry at ranges up to 180 miles. This paper provides details regarding the following design and integration issues: o) RF Transmitter Design o) RF Receivers o) Airborne Antenna o) Ground Based Antenna o) Data Interfaces o) System Performance o) Problems / Solutions
  • Data Acquisition System Central Multiplexer

    Anderson, William; Carro, Eduardo; Loral Test & Information Systems (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    The Central Multiplexer is a versatile data multiplexer designed to address emerging test requirements for recording data from many sources on digital rotary head recorders at high data rates. A modular design allows easy reconfiguration for airborne or laboratory use; simultaneous data input from 63 sources of data in any combination of PCM commutators, ARINC 429 buses, ARINC 629 buses, MIL- STD-1553 buses, and general-purpose high-speed serial data packets; simultaneous, independent programmable outputs to high-speed digital data recorders, quick-look displays, and engineering monitor and analysis systems; and setup and control from a remote panel, a dumb terminal, a laptop personal computer, a standalone test system, or a large control computer.
  • Optimum Symbol Synchronization

    James, Calvin L.; AlliedSignal Technical Services Corporation (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    Although most closed-loop synchronizers employ maximum likelihood estimators for symbol value decisions, in general, their symbol timing estimates are not optimum. It would seem only natural that an optimum timing estimator would choose interval partitions based on maximizing the observed sample signal-to-noise ratio. The symbol synchronizer described below achieves optimum performance when decisions on present symbol values are based on current and previously-received symbol samples. This procedure attempts to reestablish the interval independence criterion, thereby reducing timing estimator variance. The realization presented is motivated by an open-loop maximum a posteriori (MAP) structure analysis.
  • An Algorithm for Efficient Computation of the Fast Fourier Transform Over Arbitrary Frequency Intervals

    DaBell, Steve; Motorola GSTG (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    In many signal processing and telemetry applications only a portion of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) of a data sequence is of interest. This paper develops an algorithm which enables computation of the FFT only over the frequency values of interest, reducing the computational complexity. As will be shown, the algorithm is also very modular which lends to efficient parallel processing implementation. This paper will begin by developing the frequency selective FFT algorithm, and conclude with a comparative analysis of the computational complexity of the algorithm with respect to the traditional FFT.
  • Sub-Optimum Receiver Filters

    Osborne, William P.; Gutierrez, Alberto; New Mexico State University (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    This paper presents a method for analyzing the performance of a digital receiver when using standard analog filters in place of the ideal matched filter. Expressions are developed for the probability of error and performance loss of the sub-optimum receiver as functions of the minimum eye value and noise bandwidth of the suboptimum receiver filter. A method is developed for choosing the best sub-optimum filter in the sense of minimizing the probability of error. The best sub-optimum Bessel filter of order less than or equal to 6 is specified in terms of 3-dB bandwidth and filter order for a system with a rectangular transmit pulse. This method is applicable to other transmit pulse shapes and can be applied to channels with limited bandwidth. The optimum 3-dB bandwidth obtained here can be scaled relative to the symbol rate to correspond to any practical system.
  • RadarMap: A Multi-Platformed Range Display Utility

    Rivero, Juan J.; Rarick, Michael J. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    RadarMap is designed to take PCM-encoded radar data and process it to display the trace of radar targets on a map of the Eglin Test Range. Written in C, X Window, and OSF/Motif, RadarMap runs on a DECStation 5000/240 and utilizes the Loral Data Gathers C functions library to directly access PCM parameters from a Loral System 500 telemetry rack. X Window (a hardware-independent bitmapped graphics display system), OSF/Motif, and the Data Gathers libraries allow portability to other operating systems that support a C compiler and these libraries.
  • An Advanced Digital Ranging and Telecontrol Apparatus

    Hua, Zhong-Han; Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    An earth station apparatus and its technical specificities and components are described in this article. Which is used for locating and telecontrol of flying objects. The pseudo-random spread spectrum system compatible with GPS is used in measuring the distance and velocity of moving-targets. The ranging and range-rate measuring signals and telecontrol signal are included in up link. The CDMADS, GLOD code are used for ranging and range-rate measuring. The GLOD code rate varies from 1 Kbps to 2.048 Mbps in step 1 bit. The subcarrier modulation systems of telecontrol are PSK, FSK, MFSK and High alphabet modulation. The frequency of subcarrier varies from 1 KHz to 1 MHZ in step 1 Hz. The rate of instruction code varies from 50 bps to 38.4Kbps in step 1 bit. The modulation indexes varies from 0.7 to 2 in 16 steps. The polarization diversity technique of digital symmetical common mode and differential mode loops are applied in down link receiver. It is used for demodulation of back signal, ranging and range-rate measuring signal and A, E error signal used by track system. The digital technique and modularization bus technique are used throughout the apparetus. All modules in apparatus and their principle are discussed in thes article.
  • Low Cost Vector Scoring System for Airborne Targets

    Whiteman, Don; Bradley, Joe; Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    Testing of airborne weapons systems often requires that a scoring system be placed on the target drone to obtain critical miss distance data. Advanced weapons utilizing directional warheads often require a scoring system which yields vector, miss distance and miss direction, information. Scalar scoring systems currently in use are relatively simple and inexpensive. Vector scoring systems are typically complex and the cost of systems which are currently available or are being developed can be prohibitively expensive. Due to the current military budget decline, development of a low cost vector scoring system is desirable This paper introduces a low cost vector scoring system developed for airborne target drones and based on an inexpensive scalar scoring system currently in use. To meet the low cost criteria, vector operation is achieved via minimal modifications to the existing scalar system.
  • Application of Dither to Low Resolution Quantization Systems

    Borgen, Gary S.; NAWCWPNS (International Foundation for Telemetering, 1994-10)
    A significant problem in the processing chain of a low resolution quantization system is the Analog to Digital converter quantization error. The classical model of quantization treats the error generated as a random additive process that is independent of the input and uniformly distributed. This model is valid for complex or random input signals that are large relative to a least significant bit. But the model fails catastrophically for small, simple signals applied to high resolution quantization systems, and in addition, the model fails for simple signals applied to low resolution quantization systems, i.e. one to 6 bits resolution. This paper will discuss a means of correcting this problem by the application of dither. Two methods of dither will be discussed as well as a real-life implementation of the techniques.

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