• ACHIEVING PORTABILITY FOR LEGACY SOFTWARE USING JAVA

      Cooper, D. Kelly; TYBRIN Corporation; Eglin Air Force Base (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      Increasingly, many software developers are facing the challenge of adapting software applications developed on one platform to work on multiple platforms. While software standards have helped this effort, they do not go far enough, and many platforms only partially support these standards leaving many needed functions in platform specific libraries. This is particularly evident in the areas of graphics and user interfaces, threading and synchronization, and in network and file access. Fortunately, Java offers a common interface where native libraries diverge. This paper outlines a phased strategy for migrating platform specific applications to be platform independent while reusing the robust, existing algorithms.
    • ADAPTIVE MODULATION FOR COGNITIVE RADIO

      Kosbar, Kurt; Sharma, Gaurav; University of Missouri (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      While investigating methods for more efficiently allocating the available spectrum researchers noticed that in many geographical locations, there are broad bands of frequencies that are lightly utilized. Such inefficiencies are inevitable with fixed spectral allocation rules. Cognitive Radios actively measure the spectral utilization and adapt their modulation, frequencies, bandwidths, power, etc. to take advantage of these lightly used “spectral holes” or “white spaces”. Much of the research work in cognitive radios has not taken into account some of the challenges faced in the telemetry community-including multipaths and a guaranteed quality of service. This paper highlights how some mathematical models of adaptive modulation discussed extensively in many research papers and textbooks can be used in Cognitive Radios as well.
    • AJAX: A NEW TWIST ON EXISTING TECHNOLOGIES

      Gilorma, Mike; Apogee Labs, Inc. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) has improved web applications in a way that has enhanced performance and made the user experience more like that of a desktop application. As the performance of PCs increases and broadband Internet access is more prevalent, switching between web pages is less painful than ever. One of the biggest advantages of AJAX is the ability for a web application to update only a small piece of data without refreshing the whole page. AJAX also allows for piecewise validation of user entry as opposed to the standard form entry with which we have become so accustomed. This paper describes how AJAX enabled applications are different from classic web applications and shows the advantages and disadvantages from both client and server sides of an AJAX enabled application. AJAX is not a new technology, but rather a new approach to web applications that uses standards already in place for XHTML, CSS, DOM, XML, and JavaScript. It is this new approach that eliminates the full page refresh that was so commonplace and now gives web applications the ability to look and feel more like desktop applications.
    • APPLICATIONS OF A HARDWARE SPECIFICATION FOR INSTRUMENTATION METADATA

      Hamilton, John; Fernandes, Ronald; Graul, Mike; Jones, Charles H.; Knowledge Based Systems, Inc; Edwards Air Force Base (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      In this paper, we discuss the benefits of maintaining a neutral-format hardware specification along with the telemetry metadata specification. We present several reasons and methods for maintaining the hardware specifications, as well as several potential uses of hardware specification. These uses include cross-validation with the telemetry metadata and automatic generation of both metadata and instrumentation networks.
    • ARCHITECTURAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR A VARIABLE BIT RATE DATA ACQUISITION TELEMETRY ENCODER

      Lee, Jeffrey C.; L-3 Communications – Telemetry-West (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      Modern telemetry systems require flexible bit rate telemetry encoders in order to optimize mission formats for varying data rate requirements and/or signal to noise conditions given a fixed transmitter power. Implementing a variable bit rate telemetry encoder requires consideration of several possible architectural topologies that place different system requirements on data acquisition modules within the encoder in order to maintain adequate signal fidelity of sensor information. This paper focuses on the requirements, design considerations and tradeoffs associated with differing architectural topologies for implementing a variable bit rate encoder and the resulting implications on the encoder systems data acquisition units.
    • THE ARCHITECTURE OF AIRCRAFT INSTRUMENTATION NETWORKS

      Roach, John; Teletronics Technology Corporation (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      The development of network-based data acquisition systems has resulted in a new architecture for supporting flight instrumentation that has the potential to revolutionize the way we test our aircraft. Unlike conventional flight test instrumentation, networks provide for a two-way communication path between all elements of the system, utilize packetized data, support communication protocols, have dynamic quality of service levels, can be subject to loss of data, utilize asynchronous transmission behavior and provide an even higher level of time synchronization. Different flight test architectures can be realized which combine each of the previous attributes in different ways; finding the best architecture for a set of given applications while minimizing cost and complexity is a very difficult problem. For the last 3 years, the Network Products Division at Teletronics has been involved in the design and evaluation of aircraft instrumentation networks for both customers and the iNET program. This paper describes the result of these efforts by discussing the high-level design of a modular architecture for an aircraft instrumentation network.
    • BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES FOR INCREASED POWER EFFICIENCY IN MODERN TELEMETRY TRANSMITTERS

      Bozarth, Don; Horcher, Greg; L-3 Communications (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      With recent developments in telemetry transmitter technologies, significantly greater DC to RF power efficiencies can be achieved. These new high efficiency transmitter designs may impact overall system design trade-offs by reducing the system size and weight requirements for batteries, heat sinks, and cabling. Furthermore, these fully DC isolated, next generation ARTM Tier 0, I and II enabled devices offer unique options to the platform designer in EMI/EMC control and system design. Advanced manufacturing techniques coupled with adaptive microprocessor control promises enhanced functionality, improved performance and reduced unit costs. The paper presents the performance of a new, high efficiency, telemetry transmitter topology and the possible system benefits involved with the application of this advanced transmitter technology within modern and legacy telemetry platforms. Specific sub-assembly circuit design techniques will be discussed and compared with prior design approaches.
    • CALCULATING AERODYNAMIC COEFFICIENTS FOR A NASA APOLLO BODY USING TELEMETRY DATA FROM FREE FLIGHT RANGE TESTING

      Brown, T. Gordon; Vong, Timothy; Topper, Ben; U.S. Army Research Laboratory; Data Matrix Solutions, Inc (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) was requested by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center (LaRC) to perform a free-flight experiment with a telemetry (TM) instrumented sub-scaled Apollo shaped reentry vehicle in order to determine its aerodynamic coefficients. ARL has developed a unique flight diagnostic capability for reconstructing flight trajectory and determining aerodynamic coefficients of projectiles by using sensor data telemetered from free flight experiments. A custom launch package was designed for this experiment that included the Apollo shaped projectile, which housed a modular telemetry unit, and a rapid prototyped sabot. The experiment was able to produce estimates for aerodynamic coefficients that were considered accurate and this technique is appealing to NASA for the development of their spacecraft in the future.
    • A Common Solution to Custom Network Applications

      Yin, Jennifer; Dehmelt, Chris; L-3 Communications – Telemetry East (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      The deployment of networks has become ubiquitous in the avionics world, as they have opened the door to a rich suite of common and open hardware and software tools that provide greater functionality and interoperability. Unfortunately, a number of networked avionic and other related applications can be affected by vendor or application specific proprietary implementations. These “closed” implementations may reduce or eliminate the benefits of a standardized network, requiring the customization of the data acquisition system to allow it to properly operate with the other devices. This paper presents the approach that was recently employed for the development of a network interface module that can be quickly reconfigured to address the changing requirements of network applications, including monitoring of industry standard and proprietary networks, or providing the command and data interface to the data acquisition system itself. This reconfigurability of the module is shown in a review of four different specific applications.
    • COMPARISON OF NONCOHERENT DETECTORS FOR SOQPSK AND GMSK IN PHASE NOISE CHANNELS

      Perrins, Erik; Syed, Afzal; University of Kansas (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      SOQPSK and GMSK are highly bandwidth efficient continuous phase modulation (CPM) schemes with several desirable qualities. In both cases, coherent detectors are available with good performance in AWGN. In this paper, we develop reduced complexity noncoherent detectors for SOQPSK and GMSK; and discuss a phase noise model. This is followed by a performance comparison of both the noncoherent detectors in channels with phase noise.
    • DATA DISPLAY INTERCHANGEABILITY FOR HETEROGENEOUS PLATFORMS

      Ross, Robert W.; K/Bidy, Gilles; L-3 Communications (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      A test range facility may consist of a heterogeneous array of computer and workstation assets, given the need to support various new and legacy projects. The data display and analysis software for this heterogeneous environment can be equally diverse, with different application software available and/or supported on the workstations. The demands of managing an operator team skilled in the use of the various software applications, along with the support and maintenance costs, can be restrictive to a cost-effective and productive operation environment. The need for data display and analysis software that can run on all platforms in a heterogeneous environment plays a major role in creating an effective workforce capable of supporting multiple projects without the need to specialize on specific data display software. Likewise, the costs of maintenance and support are greatly reduced. A pure Java™ data display and analysis software product can meet the requirements of this need.
    • DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF AN OPTICAL TELEMETRY SYSTEM

      Spjut, Erik; Acon, Chris; George, Nisha; Kimbrell, Scott; Pivonka, Dan; Rowland, Clarence; Schulze, W. Buck; Harvey Mudd College (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      The Edwards Air Force Base Undergraduate Clinic Team at Harvey Mudd College designed, built and tested a laser-based telemetry system for use on test aircraft at the EAFB Flight Test Center. The system was designed to communicate from an aircraft to a stationary, terrestrial receiver at a distance of up to 60 miles while traveling at speeds up to 230 mph. The transmitter system is restricted to the size of a standard 4’ tall 19" wide equipment rack. The transmitter is designed to maintain a constant laser footprint diameter of 100 meters at the receiver and use both coarse acquisition and closed-loop fine tracking systems. The minimum data rate is 10 Mbps. Sub-system testing and integration was not completed. Completed sub-systems included GPS/INS-based tracking (for coarse-tracking), position-sensitive-detector (PSD) optics (a finetracking system component), a transmitter gimbal assembly, software used to integrate and control hardware at the transmitter and receiver, and a complete receiver system. A PSD-based tracking system and an automatic collimation system were designed and constructed, but only partially tested.
    • DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE OF A MULTI-MODE MULTI-RATE TELEMETRY TRANSMITTER

      Ahmed, Walid K. M.; Wougk, Harald; Tyco Electronics Wireless Systems (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      Typical telemetry transmitter designs have focused on analog-circuit implementations, which suffer limitations when required to support multi-mode and multi-rate capabilities. In this paper, we introduce a transmitter design (and associated techniques) that employ an all-digital baseband line-up that utilizes only one single-rate clock. Thus, keeping the analog hardware to a minimum and providing the maximum possible flexibility through digital programmability, in order to efficiently support multi-mode (i.e., various modulation schemes) and multi-rate (i.e., various bit-rates) capabilities. The telemetry standard is defined in the IRIG 106-04 specification document published by the Range Commanders Council (RCC) government telemetry group [1]. The Telemetry standard supports several modulation schemes all of which fall under the general modulation family of continuous phase modulation (CPM). Out of such a family of modulation schemes, the work presented in this paper focuses on two modulation schemes as examples, namely, SOQPSK and the PCM/FM. However, this does not limit the scope of the ideas and techniques proposed in this paper. We present various design techniques as well as implementation considerations. We also present actual measured results using a test-bed and a synthesizer IC that have been developed in our laboratories. Finally, we compare the measured results with simulations in order to validate the performance of our implemented design.
    • DESIGN OF A CONFIGURATION AND MANAGEMENT TOOL FOR INSTRUMENTATION NETWORKS

      Roach, John; Teletronics Technology Corporation (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      The development of network-based data acquisition systems has resulted in a new architecture for supporting flight instrumentation that has the potential to revolutionize the way we test our aircraft. However, the inherent capability and flexibility in a networked test architecture can only be realized by the flight engineer if a sufficiently powerful toolset is available that can configure and manage the system. This paper introduces the concept of an instrumentation configuration and management system (ICMS) that acts as the central resource for configuring, controlling, and monitoring the instrumentation network. Typically, the ICMS supports a graphical user interface into the workings of the instrumentation network, providing the user with a friendly and efficient way to verify the operation of the system. Statistics being gathered at different peripherals within the network would be collected by this tool and formatted for interpretation by the user. Any error conditions or out-of-bounds situations would be detected by the ICMS and signaled to the user. Changes made to the operation of any of the peripherals in the network (if permitted) would be managed by the ICMS to ensure consistency of the system. Furthermore, the ICMS could guarantee that the appropriate procedures were being followed and that the operator had the required privileges needed to make any changes. This paper describes the high-level design of a modular and multi-platform ICMS and its use within the measurement-centric aircraft instrumentation network architecture under development by the Network Products Division at Teletronics.
    • DESIGN OF A MISSION DATA STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM FOR NASA DRYDEN FLIGHT RESEARCH CENTER

      Lux, Jessica; Downing, Bob; Sheldon, Jack; NASA Dryden Flight Research Center; Arcata Associates, Inc. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      The Western Aeronautical Test Range (WATR) at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) employs the WATR Integrated Next Generation System (WINGS) for the processing and display of aeronautical flight data. This report discusses the post-mission segment of the WINGS architecture. A team designed and implemented a system for the near- and long-term storage and distribution of mission data for flight projects at DFRC, providing the user with intelligent access to data. Discussed are the legacy system, an industry survey, system operational concept, high-level system features, and initial design efforts.
    • DESIGN TRADE-OFFS FOR REAL-TIME CHAPTER 10 REPRODUCTION

      Tompkins, Bob; K/Bidy, Gilles; L-3 Communications, Telemetry-West (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      This paper presents an analysis of various methods to address the reproduction of recorded Chapter 10 data in real-time. The standard IRIG 106 Chapter 10 recording format is quickly becoming the most commonly used data recording format in the community. As such, a lot of emphasis has been put on recording requirements including time-stamping, data multiplexing, etc. However, there are additional needs that must be considered when using Chapter 10 as the only permanent data record. It is often necessary to reproduce the original data stream exactly as it was recorded with all its timing characteristics. This paper presents various tradeoffs discovered while designing a real-time playback system for recorded chapter 10 data files. In particular, techniques such as just-enough buffering, data re-ordering, pre-processing, etc will be discussed.
    • DEVELOPMENT OF A NETWORK-CENTRIC DATA ACQUISITION, RECORDING, AND TELEMETRY SYSTEM

      Moodie, Myron; Newton, Todd; Abbott, Ben; Southwest Research Institute (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      The growth of the Internet and the resulting increasing speeds and decreasing prices of network equipment have spurred much interest in applying networks to flight test applications. However, the best-effort, variable-latency nature of network transport causes challenges that must be addressed to provide reliable data acquisition and timing performance. This paper describes the major issues that must be addressed when designing and implementing real-time networking applications. An overview of a recently implemented large-scale, network-centric data acquisition, recording, and telemetry system for commercial flight test applications provides a real-world example of what is currently achievable.
    • DEVELOPMENT OF AN UNMANNED AIRBORNE TELEMETRY TRACKING AND RELAY SYSTEM

      Pho, Tam P.; Wysong, Henry D.; Aerocross Systems, Inc. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      Aerocross Systems, Inc. is developing a low-cost unmanned airborne telemetry relay system to augment the USAF Air Armament Center’s Eglin Gulf Range instrumentation resources. The system is designed to remotely autotrack and relay S-Band telemetry and VHF/UHF voice communications from test articles beyond the line-of-sight of land-based instrumentation. The system consists of a medium altitude/endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), a Mission Control Station, and a remotely operated telemetry/voice tracking and relay instrumentation suite. Successfully developed and deployed, the system will contribute to lower range costs while enhancing range instrumentation performance.
    • DEVELOPMENT, EVALUATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A SURFACE-MOUNT, HIGH-G ACCELEROMETER

      Peregino, Philip J., II; Bukowski, Edward F.; U.S. Army Research Laboratory (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      The Endevco model 7270A high-g accelerometer has been used successfully in numerous flight tests at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. The accelerometer is available in ranges as low as 6,000 g’s up to 200,000 g’s so they can be used in a variety of situations to measure setback, set forward and balloting in artillery rounds, mortars and tank projectiles to name a few. However, one of the disadvantages of the model 7270A is its physical size, in the era of die level and surface mount components, the 7270A is relatively large. The sensing element is packaged inside a metal case with screw holes for mounting to a rigid surface. In addition, there are wires protruding from the case for electrical connections. In the area of munitions, small cavities don’t always afford the room for a large gauge. It was desirable to repackage the die in a smaller container and make it a surface mount component for a printed circuit board. A contract was developed for Endevco to repackage the die and to develop a tri-axial version with the repackaged die. The newly developed accelerometers were tested and evaluated by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
    • DIFFERENTIAL ENCODING REVEALED: AN EXPLANATION OF THE TIER-1 DIFFERENTIAL ENCODING IN IRIG 106

      Rice, Michael; Brigham Young University (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2007-10)
      IRIG 106-04 specifies differential encoding for use with the interoperable Tier-1 modulations to deal with phase and delay-axis ambiguities associated with PLL-based carrier phase synchronization. The origins of the differential encoding have been shrouded in the mists of an unavailable technical report and a mysterious connection to previous published work in the open literature. This paper removes the mystery by showing that the differential encoding rule results from encoding bit-by-bit transitions in the phase trajectory of an offset QPSK modulated carrier.