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Advanced technology satellite demodulator development

Ford Aerospace has developed a proof-of-concept satellite 8 phase shift keying (PSK) modulation and coding system operating in the Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) mode at a data range of 200 Mbps using rate 5/6 forward error correction coding. The 80 Msps 8 PSK modem was developed in a mostly digital form and is amenable to an ASIC realization in the next phase of development. The codec was developed as a paper design only. The power efficiency goal was to be within 2 dB of theoretical at a bit error rate (BER) of 5x10(exp 7) while the measured implementation loss was 4.5 dB. The bandwidth efficiency goal was 2 bits/sec/Hz while the realized bandwidth efficiency was 1.8 bits/sec/Hz. The burst format used a preamble of only 40 8 PSK symbol times including 32 symbols of all zeros and an eight symbol unique word. The modem and associated special test equipment (STE) were fabricated mostly on a specially designed stitch-weld board although a few of the highest rate circuits were built on printed circuit cards. All the digital circuits were ECL to support the clock rates of from 80 MHz to 360 MHz. The transmitter and receiver matched filters were square-root Nyquist bandpass filters realized at the 3.37 GHz i.f. The modem operated as a coherent system although no analog phase locked (PLL) loop was employed. Within the budgetary constraints of the program, the approach to the demodulator has been proven and is eligible to proceed to the next phase of development of a satellite demodulator engineering model. This would entail the development of an ASIC version of the digital portion of the demodulator, and MMIC version of the quadrature detector, and SAW Nyquist filters to realize the bandwidth efficiency.

Ames, Stephen A.

NASA. Lewis Research Center Advanced Modulation and Coding Project: Introduction and overview

The Advanced Modulation and Coding Project at LeRC is sponsored by the Office of Space Science and Applications, Communications Division, Code EC, at NASA Headquarters and conducted by the Digital Systems Technology Branch of the Space Electronics Division. Advanced Modulation and Coding is one of three focused technology development projects within the branch's overall Processing and Switching Program. The program consists of industry contracts for developing proof-of-concept (POC) and demonstration model hardware, university grants for analyzing advanced techniques, and in-house integration and testing of performance verification and systems evaluation. The Advanced Modulation and Coding Project is broken into five elements: (1) bandwidth- and power-efficient modems; (2) high-speed codecs; (3) digital modems; (4) multichannel demodulators; and (5) very high-data-rate modems. At least one contract and one grant were awarded for each element.

Budinger, James M.

ATDRSS 300 MB/S modem program

The 300 Mbps modem was developed for direct application to the next generation high data rate Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) communication system. This modem utilizes continuous phase modulation combined with a restricted range Reed-Solomon Codec to achieve a bandwidth efficiency of 3 bits/sec/hz. The constant envelope amplitude signal allows one to operate the power amplifier in its saturation mode without significant spectral regrowth or bit error rate degradation.

Ryan, Carl R.

Modem design for a MOBILESAT terminal

The implementation is described of a programmable digital signal processor based system, designed for use as a test bed in the development of a digital modem, codec, and channel simulator. Code was written to configure the system as a 5600 bps or 6600 bps QPSK modem. The test bed is currently being used in an experiment to evaluate the performance of digital speech over shadowed channels in the Australian mobile satellite (MOBILESAT) project.

Rice, M.

Propagation considerations in the American Mobile Satellite system design

An overview of the American Mobile Satellite Corporation (AMSC) mobile satellite services (MSS) system with special emphasis given to the propagation issues that were considered in the design is presented. The aspects of the voice codec design that effect system performance in a shadowed environment are discussed. The strategies for overcoming Ku-Band rain fades in the uplink and downlink paths of the gateway station are presented. A land mobile propagation study that has both measurement and simulation activities is described.

Kittiver, Charles

Video transmission on ATM networks

The broadband integrated services digital network (B-ISDN) is expected to provide high-speed and flexible multimedia applications. Multimedia includes data, graphics, image, voice, and video. Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is the adopted transport techniques for B-ISDN and has the potential for providing a more efficient and integrated environment for multimedia. It is believed that most broadband applications will make heavy use of visual information. The prospect of wide spread use of image and video communication has led to interest in coding algorithms for reducing bandwidth requirements and improving image quality. The major results of a study on the bridging of network transmission performance and video coding are: Using two representative video sequences, several video source models are developed. The fitness of these models are validated through the use of statistical tests and network queuing performance. A dual leaky bucket algorithm is proposed as an effective network policing function. The concept of the dual leaky bucket algorithm can be applied to a prioritized coding approach to achieve transmission efficiency. A mapping of the performance/control parameters at the network level into equivalent parameters at the video coding level is developed. Based on that, a complete set of principles for the design of video codecs for network transmission is proposed.

Chen, Yun-Chung

Signal Processor Development by Personnel of the JSC Signal Processing Section

The purpose of this paper is to describe systems and components of systems developed by personnel in the Signal Processing Section of the Tracking and Communications Division. The scope of this includes past developments which are in current use in NASA flight operations and future developments which are targeted for upcoming NASA applications. These projects specifically are: (1) NASA High Definition Television (HDTV) Project, (2) Video Codecs, (3) NASA Electronic Still Camera (ESC) Project, (4) Hercules Payload, (5) Ku-band Communications Adapter (KCA), (6) Windows Drivers for Satellite Interfacing to Commercial Equipment, and (7) Advanced Statistical Multiplexers. The methods used to determine what projects should be done in-house as opposed to which should not is based in NASA applications versus commercially available systems to meet those applications. If a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) component or system is available which meets the need, the first choice is to use COTS equipment. If it is not, and there is a NASA requirement, it is developed in-house. This results in technology which is being developed which otherwise was not available. Personnel involved in these projects have been contacted by many commercial companies interested in licensing or obtaining the NASA design.

Holland, S. Douglas

Adaptive data rate SSMA system for personal and mobile satellite communications

An adaptive data rate SSMA (spread spectrum multiple access) system is proposed for mobile and personal multimedia satellite communications without the aid of system control earth stations. This system has a constant occupied bandwidth and has variable data rates and processing gains to mitigate communication link impairments such as fading, rain attenuation and interference as well as to handle variable data rate on demand. Proof of concept hardware for 6MHz bandwidth transponder is developed, that uses offset-QPSK (quadrature phase shift keying) and MSK (minimum shift keying) for direct sequence spread spectrum modulation and handle data rates of 4k to 64kbps. The RS422 data interface, low rate voice and H.261 video codecs are installed. The receiver is designed with coherent matched filter technique to achieve fast code acquisition, AFC (automatic frequency control) and coherent detection with minimum hardware losses in a single matched filter circuit. This receiver structure facilitates variable data rate on demand during a call. This paper shows the outline of the proposed system and the performance of the prototype equipment.

Ikegami, Tetsushi

Testing and Performance Analysis of the Multichannel Error Correction Code Decoder

This report provides the test results and performance analysis of the multichannel error correction code decoder (MED) system for a regenerative satellite with asynchronous, frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) uplink channels. It discusses the system performance relative to various critical parameters: the coding length, data pattern, unique word value, unique word threshold, and adjacent-channel interference. Testing was performed under laboratory conditions and used a computer control interface with specifically developed control software to vary these parameters. Needed technologies - the high-speed Bose Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codec from Harris Corporation and the TRW multichannel demultiplexer/demodulator (MCDD) - were fully integrated into the mesh very small aperture terminal (VSAT) onboard processing architecture and were demonstrated.

Soni, Nitin J.

Near-Horizontal, Two-Phase Flow Patterns of Nitrogen and Hydrogen at Low Mass Heat and Flux (on CD-ROM)

One reason for NASA's interest in cryogenic two-phase flow with low mass and heat flux is the need to design spacecraft heat exchangers used for vaporizing cryogenic propellants. The CD-ROM provides digitized movies of particular flow patterns observed in experimental work. The movies have been provided in (QuickTime9Trademark) format, encoded at 320w x 240h pixels, 15 fps, using the Sorenson(Trademark) Video Codec for compression. Experiments were conducted to obtain data on the two-phase (liquid and vapor) flow behavior of cryogenic nitrogen and hydrogen under low mass and heat flux conditions. Tests were performed in normal gravity with a 1.5 degree up flow configuration. View ports in the apparatus permitted visual observation of the two-phase flow patterns. Computer codes to predict flow patterns were developed from theoretical/empirical models reported in the literature. Predictions from the computer codes were compared with experimental flow pattern observations. Results are presented employing the traditional two-dimensional flow pattern map format using the liquid and gas superficial velocities as coordinates. In general, the agreement between the experimental results and the analytical predictive methods is reasonably good. Small regions of the flow pattern maps are identified where the models are deficient as a result of neglecting phase change phenomena. Certain regions of the maps were beyond the range of the experiments and could not be completely validated. Areas that could benefit from further work include modeling of the transition from separated flow, collection of additional data in the bubble and annular flow regimes, and collection of experimental data at other inclination angles, tube diameters and high heat flux.

TWO PHASE FLOW

Multichannel Error Correction Code Decoder

NASA Lewis Research Center's Digital Systems Technology Branch has an ongoing program in modulation, coding, onboard processing, and switching. Recently, NASA completed a project to incorporate a time-shared decoder into the very-small-aperture terminal (VSAT) onboard-processing mesh architecture. The primary goal was to demonstrate a time-shared decoder for a regenerative satellite that uses asynchronous, frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) uplink channels, thereby identifying hardware and power requirements and fault-tolerant issues that would have to be addressed in a operational system. A secondary goal was to integrate and test, in a system environment, two NASA-sponsored, proof-of-concept hardware deliverables: the Harris Corp. high-speed Bose Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codec and the TRW multichannel demultiplexer/demodulator (MCDD). A beneficial byproduct of this project was the development of flexible, multichannel-uplink signal-generation equipment.

Source record

Digital Channel Simulator Developed and Tested

The Digital Channel Simulator (DCS) is a real-time test set developed in-house by the NASA Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field that simulates the characteristics of the modulator, demodulator, and transmission medium in a typical communications system to enable controlled laboratory testing of codec pairs. The DCS can support data rates up to 100 megasymbols per second (Msymbols/sec) with symbol sizes up to 10 bits and is compatible with both TTL (transistor transistor logic) and ECL (emitter coupled logic) interfaces. Because of its use of digital integrated circuits (IC's), the DCS offers the user accurate and repeatable testing while maintaining a simple reconfiguration of the modulation scheme and noise characteristics. The PC-based graphical user interface (GUI) assures user friendly operation for configuring, controlling, and monitoring the DCS and system during tests. In a typical communications system, the modulator places a symbol in constellation space and puts it on a carrier to be sent to the demodulator. Because of noise on the channel, the I and Q position in constellation space cannot be recovered exactly, and the received coordinates shift. To mimic this process in the laboratory, the DCS uses a mapper to place the symbol in constellation space. It simulates the shift in coordinates by digitally adding "noise" to the I and Q values. The mapper and noise source are implemented in lookup tables. Modulation schemes and noise characteristics are set by the values loaded in these tables. The mapper also has a pass-through mode to facilitate modulator testing, allowing noise to be added to 8-bit I and Q values of modulated data without a second mapping. To achieve high symbol rates, eight processing circuits are placed in parallel between an ECL demultiplexer and multiplexer. A graphical user interface was developed to calculate, load, and verify the values for the lookup tables. This interface can also be used to debug and verify proper operation of the channel simulator or to control an experiment. Operation of the DCS has been verified through three tests: a low-speed comprehensive system test, a high-speed (20 Msymbols/sec) test of the TTL interface, and a high-speed (100 Msymbols/sec) test of the ECL interface. The DCS is now ready for use by NASA and external customers.

Bizon, Thomas P.

VOIP over Space Networks

This viewgraph presentation reviews Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) over a space networking environment. The topics include: 1) Drivers for VOIP in Space; 2) Challenges in the Space Networking Environment: Long Latencies, Path errors, Simplex paths, Asymmetric paths, QoS requirements, Team-based operations, and Overhead concerns; 3) Possible VOIPOSN approaches; 4) Study of BER, code type and voice frame length on PESQ-MOS; 5) Codec Latency Trade Space; and 6) Testbed.

Internet Protocol (IP)

Caution and Warning Alarm Design and Evaluation for NASA CEV Auditory Displays: SHFE Information Presentation Directed Research Project (DRPP) report 12.07

The design of caution-warning signals for NASA s Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and other future spacecraft will be based on both best practices based on current research and evaluation of current alarms. A design approach is presented based upon cross-disciplinary examination of psychoacoustic research, human factors experience, aerospace practices, and acoustical engineering requirements. A listening test with thirteen participants was performed involving ranking and grading of current and newly developed caution-warning stimuli under three conditions: (1) alarm levels adjusted for compliance with ISO 7731, "Danger signals for work places - Auditory Danger Signals", (2) alarm levels adjusted to an overall 15 dBA s/n ratio and (3) simulated codec low-pass filtering. Questionnaire data yielded useful insights regarding cognitive associations with the sounds.

Durand R Begault

NASA Activities: SpaceWire Working Group Meeting

This brief presentation highlights the efforts of the SpaceWire working group. The European Space Agency (ESA) contracted with the University of Dundee (UoD) to develop a prototype SpaceFibre Codec, which UoD has been demonstrated in hardware. UoD released a SpaceFibre Outline Specification which NASA plans to evaluate using a SpaceFibre sub-orbital demonstration (in development). Comments, questions and recommendations for ESA and UoD are provided here to generate discussion and expand participation. General findings are that the system level behavior of SpaceFibre is missing from the SpaceFibre Outline Specification, there is a need to understand how SpaceWire maps to SpaceFibre (and vice versa), and there is a need to clarify user interface to resolve inconsistencies. Architecture, virtual channel and programmatic recommendations are presented.

Rakow, Glenn

Intelligibility and Space-based Voice with Relaxed Delay Constraints

The inherent aspects and flaws surrounding space based communication is technically described and the math surrounding encoding and decoding LT Codes is examined. Utilizing LT codes as a means of reducing packet erasures due to corrupted packets on an RF link can result in higher voice quality. PESQ-MOS measure was used to analyze voice degradation over space links tested for LT codec size and number of 10ms per packet.Extensions utilizing LT codes to improve the packet erasure performance and combining the use of ASR could provide for a solid means of identifying the benefit in terms of intelligibility of voice communications in space-based networks

space communications

Demonstration of Multi-Gbps Data Rates at Ka-Band Using Software-Defined Modem and Broadband High Power Amplifier for Space Communications

The paper presents the first ever research and experimental results regarding the combination of a software-defined multi-Gbps modem and a broadband high power space amplifier when tested with an extended form of the industry standard DVB-S2 and LDPC rate 9/10 FEC codec. The modem supports waveforms including QPSK, 8-PSK, 16-APSK, 32-APSK, 64-APSK, and 128-QAM. The broadband high power amplifier is a space qualified traveling-wave tube (TWT), which has a passband greater than 3 GHz at 33 GHz, output power of 200 W and efficiency greater than 60 percent. The modem and the TWTA together enabled an unprecedented data rate at 20 Gbps with low BER of 10(exp -9). The presented results include a plot of the received waveform constellation, BER vs. E(sub b)/N(sub 0) and implementation loss for each of the modulation types tested. The above results when included in an RF link budget analysis show that NASA s payload data rate can be increased by at least an order of magnitude (greater than 10X) over current state-of-practice, limited only by the spacecraft EIRP, ground receiver G/T, range, and available spectrum or bandwidth.

Simons, Rainee N.