• 3D LOCALIZATION FOR LAUNCH VEHICLE USING COMBINED TOA AND AOA

      Flight Tracking Technology Team, Naro Space Center, Korea Aerospace Research Institute; Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Chonnam National University; Kwon, Soonho; Kim, Donghyun; Han, Jeongwoo; Kim, Dae-Oh; Hwang, Intae (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      Generally, a ground telemetry station for launch vehicle (LV) has tracking function only; therefore, position measurements depend on radar. Time of arrival (TOA) and angle of arrival (AOA) are typical location techniques for emitting targets. In this paper, we propose a Combined TOA and AOA localization method for LV using two ground stations. When transmitter (Tx) time is not known, it is necessary to make virtual onboard timer for TOA estimation. The virtual onboard timer generates time stamps of streaming frame according to data rate. First station which is located in space center has no tracking function. But it can generate the virtual onboard timer. Second station has tracking function, so it generates AOA information. By solving sphere equation(s) of TOA from at least one station and a line equation of AOA, target position in three-dimensions (3D) can be obtained. We confirm the localization performance by means of comparison with an on-board GPS of a real launch mission.
    • ADVANCES IN A LOW-COST SOFTWARE-DEFINED TELEMETRY SYSTEM

      Don, Michael; Ilg, Mark; U.S. Army Research Laboratory (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      The United States Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has developed a Pulse Code Modulated (PCM)/Binary Frequency Shift Key (BFSK) telemetry system using a low-cost commercial Software Defined Radio (SDR). Where as traditional radio systems are implemented in hardware,much of the functionality of SDR is defined in software. This gives them the flexibility to accommodate military telemetry standards as well as other specialized functions. After a summary of previous development, new telemetry advances are described, focusing on telemetry transmitter, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption, and layered protocol design. Many of these functions were proven in a field experiment at Yuma Proving Ground, AZ in March of 2017 where data was successfully encrypted, transmitted, decoded, and processed in real-time.
    • ASSPA. ASSISTANT FOR FLIGHT TEST EXECUTION

      Rubio, Pedro; Lopez, Rodrigo; Airbus D&S (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      The objective of this paper is to describe the tools that have been developed to ease the Flight Test Engineers (FTE) the execution of Flight Test and ensure the highest quality of the final product. This first product is mainly devoted to Production Flight Test (PATM), where the profile and the tests to be performed are almost the same for all flights. As during the PATM there are many checks to do and many data to gather, the idea was to execute in an automatic way as many test points as could be possible. To cope with this requirement we have to develop an Automatic Flight Phase Detection in order to start some applications in the FTE Computer without any human intervention. So, we need a smart assistant to predict the following test points that will be executed. In addition of the previous point, it was also needed to send the results of the data gathering and calculation to a “Digital Flight Test Card” to avoid the use of paper. With both aids, Automatic Flight Phase Detection and Digital Flight Test Card, the efficiency of the execution of tests has been highly improved.
    • AUTOMATING VERIFICATION FOR LEGACY SYSTEMS: A CASE STUDY OF TECHNOLOGY SUSTAINMENT WITHIN THE NASA SPACE NETWORK

      Irvin, Dana; Otranto, John; Lokshin, Kirill; Puri, Amit; Ingenicomm, Inc. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      The NASA Space Network (SN), which consists of the geosynchronous Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) constellation and its associated ground elements, is a critical national space asset that provides near-continuous, high-bandwidth telemetry, command, and communications services for numerous spacecraft and launch vehicles. The Space Network includes several key ground system elements, one of which is the White Sands Complex Data Interface Service Capability (WDISC). The WDISC has undergone multiple cycles of modification and technology refresh over its lifetime, making test automation an attractive option for reducing system verification and validation cost. This paper considers the implementation of automated testing for the WDISC as a case study in technology sustainment, discusses the principal benefits and challenges of implementing test automation for a legacy system, and presents findings that demonstrate the effectiveness of such automation models.
    • AUTONOMOUS GROUND RECONNAISSANCE DRONE USING ROBOT OPERATING SYSTEM (ROS)

      Marcellin, Michael W.; Hung, David; Tang, Cinthya; Allred, Coby; McKeever, Kennon; Murphy, James; Herriman, Ricky; Univ Arizona, Dept Elect & Comp Engn (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      The Arizona Autonomous Club is a student organization at the University of Arizona which designs, builds, and competes with Unmanned Air Systems (UAS). This year, a 25% scale Xtreme Decathlon model aircraft was selected and successfully converted into a fully autonomous UAS for the AUVSI Student Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS) 2017 competition. The UAS utilizes a Pixhawk autopilot unit, which is an independent, open-hardware project aiming at providing high-end autopilot hardware at low costs and high availability. The Pixhawk runs an efficient real time operating system (RTOS) and includes sensors such as a GPS unit, IMUs, airspeed, etc. The UAS also includes an onboard imaging system, which is controlled by an onboard computer (OBC). The Pixhawk and OBC are interconnected with two ground control stations (GCS) using the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework, which is capable of extending overall system capabilities to include an expanded telemetry downlink, obstacle avoidance, and manual overrides.
    • BOEING NW TELEMETRY SYSTEM

      Boeing Test & Evaluation; Gregoire, William C. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
    • CHALLENGES IN THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AIRBORNE TELEMETRY PROCESSING SYSTEMS

      Otranto, John; Eckman, Bill; Irvin, Dana; Tao, Felix; Lokshin, Kirill; Puri, Amit; Ingenicomm, Inc. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      While typical telemetry processing systems are fixed, ground-based assets, certain mission profiles or telemetry acquisition models may involve telemetry processing systems which reside on other platforms, such as ships, mobile vehicles, or airplanes. The design and implementation of telemetry processing systems for these platforms poses unique challenges, which may include requirements for unusual mechanical packaging, heightened electromagnetic sensitivity, or specialized electrical interfaces. This paper presents some of the key challenges involved in the design and implementation of an airborne telemetry processing system and discusses how lessons learned from solving these challenges may be applied to future telemetry processing system designs.
    • COMPARING COMMERCIAL AND T&E SPECTRUM METRICS

      Jones, Charles H.; Painter, Michael K.; C. H. Jones Consulting, LLC; Knowledge Based Systems, Inc. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      There is an ongoing need to understand how spectrum is used. In the context of defending T&E use against commercial encroachment, there is a recurring question of how commercial use compares to T&E use. This comparison is complicated by the lack of consistent definitions of the terms “use” and “efficiency” as well as different requirements of these distinctly different applications. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) recommendations lay out a foundation of spectrum metrics as applied to different applications. The RCC 707 Spectrum Management Metrics Standard provides a T&E perspective. Some insight about commercial metrics can be obtained through an internet search. This paper combines these resources to provide a coherent approach to understanding how to compare spectrum use within these different applications and how this affects the ability to defend against telemetry spectrum encroachment.
    • Data Security Architecture Considerations for Telemetry Post Processing Environments

      Kalibjian, Jeff; DXC Technology Company (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      Telemetry data has great value, as setting up a framework to collect and gather it involve significant costs. Further, the data itself has product diagnostic significance and may also have strategic national security importance if the product is defense or intelligence related. This potentially makes telemetry data a target for acquisition by hostile third parties. To mitigate this threat, data security principles should be employed by the organization to protect telemetry data. Data security is in an important element of a layered security strategy for the enterprise. The value proposition centers on the argument that if organization perimeter/internal defenses (e.g. firewall, IDS, etc.) fail enabling hostile entities to be able to access data found on internal company networks; they will be unable to read the data because it will be encrypted. After reviewing important encryption background including accepted practices, standards, and architectural considerations regarding disk, file, database and application data protection encryption strategies; specific data security options applicable to telemetry post processing environments will be discussed providing tangible approaches to better protect organization telemetry data.
    • DEFENDING T&E SPECTRUM THROUGH AUTOMATED FREQUENCY MANAGEMENT METRICS CALCULATION

      Painter, Michael K.; Fernandes, Ronald; Madanagopal, Karthic; Jones, Charles H.; Knowledge Based Systems, Inc.; C. H. Jones Consulting, LLC (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      Because of its economic value, there has been growing pressure to sell off spectrum currently allocated for defense purposes. These pressures come at a time when Department of Defense (DoD) spectrum needs are growing at an exponential pace, thus prompting heightened efforts to clearly demonstrate both the need and the responsible, efficient use of electromagnetic spectrum. In response, the DoD has developed a baseline set of standard metrics to measure spectrum utilization, demand, efficiency, and operational effectiveness. The focus has now shifted toward developing the automated tools to calculate, plot, and display these metrics. The purpose of this paper is to describe progress toward developing a Spectrum Management Metrics Toolkit (SMMT) to fill this need and its potential role in helping to analyze and defend Test and Evaluation (T&E) spectrum usage and needs.
    • DESIGN OF A LONG RANGE COGNITIVE HF RADIO WITH A TUNED COMPACT ANTENNA

      Bose, Tamal; Xin, Hao; Teku, Noel; Gulati, Gitansh; Asadi, Hamed; Vanhoy, Garrett; Abdelrahman, Ahmed H.; Morris, Kevin; Univ Arizona, Dept Elect & Comp Engn; University of Colorado Boulder, Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering Dept (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      High frequency (HF) communications, ranging from 3 to 30 MHz, are utilized by many radio enthusiasts to conduct transmissions with users across the globe. These communications depend on successfully reflecting signals off of the ionosphere. However, numerous factors (i.e. power level, coding, modulation, etc.), combined with the instability of the ionosphere, can make transmissions over this frequency band unreliable. Thus, an HF communication system design is proposed to offer more robust long range HF communications. The system has a cognitive engine that can determine transmission parameters (i.e. coding, modulation, etc.) capable of providing a high throughput and low bit error rate in various environments. The system also has a low-profile helical antenna that, combined with a matching circuit, is capable of receiving signals over different subsets of the HF band. These two components constitute a system capable of effectively transmitting and receiving signals over the HF band.
    • DEVELOPMENT OF A PORTABLE TM GROUND STATION FOR KSLV-II WITH A RS422-TO-ETHERNET TM PCM DECODER AND MAGALI TM SOFTWARE

      Yoon, Wonju; Noh, Seongmin; Korea Aerospace Research Institute (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      The onboard telemetry (TM) system of Korea Space Launch Vehicle-II (KSLV-II) transmits PCM framedatatotheTMgroundstationviaRS422beforeflightorviaRFlinkduringflight. Thispaper describes the development of a portable TM ground station for KSLV-II that can decommutate the PCM frame data received via RS422. The developed portable TM ground station consists of two major components: a RS422-to-Ethernet TM PCM decoder and a laptop running MAGALI commercial TM software. The TM PCM decoder transforms a serial bit stream of the PCM data received via RS422 into multicast UDP packets. The MAGALI TM software supports an Ethernet acquisition module for the reception of the PCM frame data, which enables decommutation of the UDP packet-based PCM frame data received from the TM PCM decoder. Furthermore, the use of multicast UDP enables simultaneous decommutation of the PCM frame data at multiple laptops running MAGALI.
    • A DISTRIBUTED SENSOR NETWORK FOR AN OFF-ROAD RACING VEHICLE

      Marcellin, Michael; Boyer, Kyle; Brubaker, Laura; Everly, Kyle; Herriman, RIchard; Houston, Paul; Ruckle, Sean; Scobie, Rory; Ulanday, Ian; Univ Arizona (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      The University of Arizona Baja Racing Team competes annually in an intense off-road racing competition. This year’s car features a distributed sensor network capable of displaying useful data to the driver, the benefits and technical aspects of which are examined by this paper. Based on the ATmega2560 chip, the system is USB programmable, features hot-swappable batteries, and includes SMD components. Each sensor is custom designed, functions as an I2C slave, and contains its own ATtiny85 microcontroller allowing all the sensors to be addressable and enables them to be wired in parallel. The system also includes interrupts for almost every single sensor, which allows for more accurate data collection and guarantees that no important data will be missed. A custom-made board was created to connect these sensors and serve as a microcontroller data logger based on an Arduino reference design.
    • A DISTRIBUTED VIDEO ACQUISITION SYSTEM

      Song, Jian; Beijing Zoweetech Ltd. (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      Camera has been used in telemetry system over decades now. Normally, the video signal outputted from cameras would be acquired by video module(s) located in general data acquisition equipment. In this paper, a distributed video acquisition system is presented. It is a synchronous acquisition system consisted of a record and control unit and several video acquisition units. The synchronous shutter control for cameras and data flow synchronous transportation inside the system is added as well. The accuracy of timing and synchronous acquisition of the system is less than 50ns.
    • EFFECTS OF AERONAUTICAL CHANNEL DYNAMICS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF LINK DEPENDENT ADAPTIVE RADIO (LDAR)

      Alam, Tasmeer; Morgan State University, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      This paper includes aeronautical channel dynamics in the flight simulations of the Link Dependent Adaptive Radio (LDAR) for realistic measurement of the throughput gain with the adaption of the modulation and coding parameters for aeronautical telemetry. Previously, the LDAR flight simulator used a fixed channel for different phases of the flight. This paper shows the performance of LDAR using a dynamic channel created by the customized two ray channel model considering delay spread, Doppler and other channel dynamics. The merger of such dynamic channel simulator with the LDAR flight simulator could help the telemetering community by providing reliable simulation results before test flights.
    • EFFICIENT ARTIFACT-FREE VIDEO SYNOPSIS FOR TARGET DETECTION AND TRACKING

      Guo, Jing-Ming; Chang, Cheng-Hsin; Lee, Hua; Radzicki, Vincent; Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of California, Santa Barbara (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      Target detection and tracking is one of the most common applications of video systems. The requirement of processing time due to the computation complexity has been the most challenging element for these operations. To achieve computation efficiency, video synopsis is one of the most promising approaches. Video synopsis is a technique that focuses on the removal or reduction of spatial and temporal redundancies, while maintaining important activities in the original video. In this paper, a new video synopsis scheme is introduced. Major characteristics of this technique include efficient background subtraction, superior processing speed, and effective object comparison.
    • EFFICIENT DATA STORAGE, SAMPLING, AND RETRIEVAL BY LEVERAGING OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGIES

      Ferrill, Micha; Avionics Test & Analysis Corporation (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      This paper demonstrates the use of open-source software tools to manage large data sets. Advances in technology have greatly reduced the cost of data storage and processing systems. The ability to handle large amounts of data efficiently while retaining fine-grain control of the data retrieval process becomes a challenge. In particular, traditional data processing applications are inadequate to handle the large data sets typically encountered in IRIG-106 Chapter 10[1] data files. We answer this challenge by using readily available, open-source tools that efficiently store and retrieve IRIG-106 Chapter 10 data to/from a file-based database. We will demonstrate a method that facilitates a separation between the parsing of raw input data and the display of desired information at a user-defined sample rate. This open-source based solution provides a low-cost, reliable, and efficient means for handling large amounts of data at a high rate of speed.
    • ELASTIC NET FOR CHANNEL ESTIMATION IN MASSIVE MIMO

      Peken, Ture; Tandon, Ravi; Bose, Tamal; Univ Arizona (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      Next generation wireless systems will support higher data rates, improved spectral efficiency, and less latency. Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is proposed to satisfy these demands. In massive MIMO, many benefits come from employing hundreds of antennas at the base station (BS) and serving dozens of user terminals (UTs) per cell. As the number of antennas increases at the BS, the channel becomes sparse. By exploiting sparse channel in massive MIMO, compressive sensing (CS) methods can be implemented to estimate the channel. In CS methods, the length of pilot sequences can be shortened compared to pilot-based methods. In this paper, a novel channel estimation algorithm based on a CS method called elastic net is proposed. Channel estimation accuracy of pilot-based, lasso, and elastic-net based methods in massive MIMO are compared. It is shown that the elastic-net based method gives the best performance in terms of error for the less pilot symbols and SNR values.
    • ENERGY EFFICIENT CELLULAR NETWORK USING ADAPTIVE USER CLUSTERING ALGORITHM FOR SPARSELY POPULATED AREA

      Moazzami, Farzad; Astatke, Yacob; Kassa, Hailu B.; Morgan State University, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      In this paper, an algorithm for distance aware energy efficient Base Stations (BSs) is proposed, which exploits the knowledge of the distance between the Mobile User (MUs) and the BS. The proposed algorithm changes the cell radius depending on user distribution in the cell. In this case adaptive (dynamically changing) concentric circles are virtually drawn so that the UEs in the same concentric circle can get constant power from the BS. It means that the mobile users(MUs) are clustered based on the distance from the BS. The energy consumption has been evaluated without sacrificing significant offered Quality of Service (QoS) on the cellular networks. The proposed scheme aids to achieve energy saving as a result of reduced transmit power based on reducing the radius of the concentric. As the radius reduces the transmit power is also reduced logarithmically. The system uses Omni directional antenna which covers all 360 degree of the cell at once. The simulation result shows that as the distance from the BS decreases, the transmission power decreases and the energy also decreases. The distance or the radius variation dynamically is based on the number of users in that track comparing to the minimum required number of threshold users. The result shows that an average of 0.1762 dB or 1.04 Watt which is 9.45% of the maximum transmit power can be saved by dynamically varying the base station the radius at the area of low traffic load for a single scan.
    • AN EVALUATION OF TERRESTRIAL WIRELESS NETWORK MODELING APPROACHES FOR THE SPACE MOBILE NETWORK

      Newton, Todd A.; Roberts, Christopher J.; Fletcher, Gregory G.; Rossiter, Daniel S.; Southwest Research Institute®; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (International Foundation for Telemetering, 2017-10)
      The Space Mobile Network (SMN) is NASA’s next generation architecture concept for communications services between ground and space-based assets. The SMN calls for a paradigm shift in space communications. The transition will move from an approach based on static, preplanned communications over point-to-point channels to a dynamic, event-driven, and network-based approach that facilitates service-oriented communications. In doing so, the SMN is able to leverage some concepts and technologies present in today’s terrestrial wireless networks, while others must be extended or adapted to the space communications domain. This paper provides background on key SMN architectural concepts and an evaluation of the suitability of terrestrial wireless network modeling tools to be used and applied for proving out SMN concepts.