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Mobile satellite communications technology - A summary of NASA activities

Studies in recent years indicate that future high-capacity mobile satellite systems are viable only if certain high-risk enabling technologies are developed. Accordingly, NASA has structured an advanced technology development program aimed at efficient utilization of orbit, spectrum, and power. Over the last two years, studies have concentrated on developing concepts and identifying cost drivers and other issues associated with the major technical areas of emphasis: vehicle antennas, speech compression, bandwidth-efficient digital modems, network architecture, mobile satellite channel characterization, and selected space segment technology. The program is now entering the next phase - breadboarding, development, and field experimentation.

Dutzi, E. J.

TCP Pacing Developed

Transmission control protocol (TCP) was conceived and designed to run over a variety of communication links, including wireless and high-bandwidth links. However, with recent technological advances in satellite and fiber-optic networks, researchers are reevaluating the flexibility of TCP. The TCP pacing and packet pair probing implementation may help overcome two of the major obstacles identified for efficient bandwidth utilization over communication links with large delay-bandwidth products.

Ivancic, William D.

Towards Efficient Scientific Data Management Using Cloud Storage

A software prototype allows users to backup and restore data to/from both public and private cloud storage such as Amazon's S3 and NASA's Nebula. Unlike other off-the-shelf tools, this software ensures user data security in the cloud (through encryption), and minimizes users operating costs by using space- and bandwidth-efficient compression and incremental backup. Parallel data processing utilities have also been developed by using massively scalable cloud computing in conjunction with cloud storage. One of the innovations in this software is using modified open source components to work with a private cloud like NASA Nebula. Another innovation is porting the complex backup to- cloud software to embedded Linux, running on the home networking devices, in order to benefit more users.

He, Qiming

30 GHz Commercial Satellite Receivers

NASA's research and development work in satellite communications for the past 10 years has included a major technology thrust aimed at opening the Ka frequency band to commercial exploitation. This has included the development and testing of advanced system network architectures, on-board switching and processing, multibeam and phased array antennas, and satellite and ground terminal RF and digital hardware. Development work in system hardware has focused on critical components including power amplifiers, satellite IF switch matrices, low noise receivers, baseband processors, and high data rate bandwidth efficient modems. This paper describes NASA's work in developing and testing 30 GHz low noise satellite receivers for commercial space communications uplink applications. Frequencies allotted for fixed service commercial satellite communications in the Ka band are 27.5 - 30.0 GHz for uplink transmission and 17.7 - 20.2 GHz for downlink transmission. The relatively large 2.5 GHz bandwidth lends itself to wideband, high data rate digital transmission applications.

Kerczewski, Robert J.

An efficient system for reliably transmitting image and video data over low bit rate noisy channels

This research project is intended to develop an efficient system for reliably transmitting image and video data over low bit rate noisy channels. The basic ideas behind the proposed approach are the following: employ statistical-based image modeling to facilitate pre- and post-processing and error detection, use spare redundancy that the source compression did not remove to add robustness, and implement coded modulation to improve bandwidth efficiency and noise rejection. Over the last six months, progress has been made on various aspects of the project. Through our studies of the integrated system, a list-based iterative Trellis decoder has been developed. The decoder accepts feedback from a post-processor which can detect channel errors in the reconstructed image. The error detection is based on the Huber Markov random field image model for the compressed image. The compression scheme used here is that of JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group). Experiments were performed and the results are quite encouraging. The principal ideas here are extendable to other compression techniques. In addition, research was also performed on unequal error protection channel coding, subband vector quantization as a means of source coding, and post processing for reducing coding artifacts. Our studies on unequal error protection (UEP) coding for image transmission focused on examining the properties of the UEP capabilities of convolutional codes. The investigation of subband vector quantization employed a wavelet transform with special emphasis on exploiting interband redundancy. The outcome of this investigation included the development of three algorithms for subband vector quantization. The reduction of transform coding artifacts was studied with the aid of a non-Gaussian Markov random field model. This results in improved image decompression. These studies are summarized and the technical papers included in the appendices.

Costello, Daniel J., Jr.

A concatenated coded modulation scheme for error control

A concatenated coded modulation scheme for error control in data communications is presented. The scheme is achieved by concatenating a Reed-Solomon outer code and a bandwidth efficient block inner code for M-ary PSK modulation. Error performance of the scheme is analyzed for an AWGN channel. It is shown that extremely high reliability can be attained by using a simple M-ary PSK modulation inner code and relatively powerful Reed-Solomon outer code. Furthermore, if an inner code of high effective rate is used, the bandwidth expansion required by the scheme due to coding will be greatly reduced. The proposed scheme is particularly effective for high speed satellite communication for large file transfer where high reliability is required. Also presented is a simple method for constructing block codes for M-ary PSK modulation. Some short M-ary PSK codes with good minimum squared Euclidean distance are constructed. These codes have trellis structure and hence can be decoded with a soft decision Viterbi decoding algorithm.

Kasami, Tadao

A concatenated coded modulation scheme for error control

A concatenated coded modulation scheme for error control in data communications is presented. The scheme is achieved by concatenating a Reed-Solomon outer code and a bandwidth efficient block inner code for M-ary PSK modulation. Error performance of the scheme is analyzed for an AWGN channel. It is shown that extremely high reliability can be attained by using a simple M-ary PSK modulation inner code and relatively powerful Reed-Solomon outer code. Furthermore, if an inner code of high effective rate is used, the bandwidth expansion required by the scheme due to coding will be greatly reduced. The proposed scheme is particularly effective for high speed satellite communications for large file transfer where high reliability is required. Also presented is a simple method for constructing block codes for M-ary PSK modulation. Some short M-ary PSK codes with good minimum squared Euclidean distance are constructed. These codes have trellis structure and hence can be decoded with a soft-decision Viterbi decoding algorithm.

Kasami, Tadao

A concatenated coded modulation scheme for error control

A concatenated coded modulation scheme for error control in data communications is presented. The scheme is achieved by concatenating a Reed-Solomon outer code and a bandwidth efficient block inner code for M-ary PSK modulation. Error performance of the scheme is analyzed for an AWGN channel. It is shown that extremely high reliability can be attained by using a simple M-ary PSK modulation inner code and a relatively powerful Reed-Solomon outer code. Furthermore, if an inner code of high effective rate is used, the bandwidth expansion required by the scheme due to coding will be greatly reduced. The proposed scheme is very effective for high speed satellite communications for large file transfer where high reliability is required. A simple method is also presented for constructing codes for M-ary PSK modulation. Some short M-ary PSK codes with good minimum squared Euclidean distance are constructed. These codes have trellis structure and hence can be decoded with a soft decision Viterbi decoding algorithm. Furthermore, some of these codes are phase invariant under multiples of 45 deg rotation.

Lin, Shu

A concatenated coded modulation scheme for error control (addition 2)

A concatenated coded modulation scheme for error control in data communications is described. The scheme is achieved by concatenating a Reed-Solomon outer code and a bandwidth efficient block inner code for M-ary PSK modulation. Error performance of the scheme is analyzed for an AWGN channel. It is shown that extremely high reliability can be attained by using a simple M-ary PSK modulation inner code and a relatively powerful Reed-Solomon outer code. Furthermore, if an inner code of high effective rate is used, the bandwidth expansion required by the scheme due to coding will be greatly reduced. The proposed scheme is particularly effective for high-speed satellite communications for large file transfer where high reliability is required. This paper also presents a simple method for constructing block codes for M-ary PSK modulation. Some short M-ary PSK codes with good minimum squared Euclidean distance are constructed. These codes have trellis structure and hence can be decoded with a soft-decision Viterbi decoding algorithm. Furthermore, some of these codes are phase invariant under multiples of 45 deg rotation.

Lin, Shu

An analysis of carrier phase jitter in an MPSK receiver utilizing map estimation

The use of 8 and 16 PSK TCM to support satellite communications in an effort to achieve more bandwidth efficiency in a power-limited channel has been proposed. This project addresses the problem of carrier phase jitter in an M-PSK receiver utilizing the high SNR approximation to the maximum aposteriori estimation of carrier phase. In particular, numerical solutions to the 8 and 16 PSK self-noise and phase detector gain in the carrier tracking loop are presented. The effect of changing SNR on the loop noise bandwidth is also discussed. These data are then used to compute variance of phase error as a function of SNR. Simulation and hardware data are used to verify these calculations. The results show that there is a threshold in the variance of phase error versus SNR curves that is a strong function of SNR and a weak function of loop bandwidth. The M-PSK variance thresholds occur at SNR's in the range of practical interest for the use of 8 and 16-PSK TCM. This suggests that phase error variance is an important consideration in the design of these systems.

Osborne, William P.

Real-time demonstration hardware for enhanced DPCM video compression algorithm

The lack of available wideband digital links as well as the complexity of implementation of bandwidth efficient digital video CODECs (encoder/decoder) has worked to keep the cost of digital television transmission too high to compete with analog methods. Terrestrial and satellite video service providers, however, are now recognizing the potential gains that digital video compression offers and are proposing to incorporate compression systems to increase the number of available program channels. NASA is similarly recognizing the benefits of and trend toward digital video compression techniques for transmission of high quality video from space and therefore, has developed a digital television bandwidth compression algorithm to process standard National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) composite color television signals. The algorithm is based on differential pulse code modulation (DPCM), but additionally utilizes a non-adaptive predictor, non-uniform quantizer and multilevel Huffman coder to reduce the data rate substantially below that achievable with straight DPCM. The non-adaptive predictor and multilevel Huffman coder combine to set this technique apart from other DPCM encoding algorithms. All processing is done on a intra-field basis to prevent motion degradation and minimize hardware complexity. Computer simulations have shown the algorithm will produce broadcast quality reconstructed video at an average transmission rate of 1.8 bits/pixel. Hardware implementation of the DPCM circuit, non-adaptive predictor and non-uniform quantizer has been completed, providing realtime demonstration of the image quality at full video rates. Video sampling/reconstruction circuits have also been constructed to accomplish the analog video processing necessary for the real-time demonstration. Performance results for the completed hardware compare favorably with simulation results. Hardware implementation of the multilevel Huffman encoder/decoder is currently under development along with implementation of a buffer control algorithm to accommodate the variable data rate output of the multilevel Huffman encoder. A video CODEC of this type could be used to compress NTSC color television signals where high quality reconstruction is desirable (e.g., Space Station video transmission, transmission direct-to-the-home via direct broadcast satellite systems or cable television distribution to system headends and direct-to-the-home).

Bizon, Thomas P.

Multi-stage decoding for multi-level block modulation codes

Various types of multistage decoding for multilevel block modulation codes, in which the decoding of a component code at each stage can be either soft decision or hard decision, maximum likelihood or bounded distance are discussed. Error performance for codes is analyzed for a memoryless additive channel based on various types of multi-stage decoding, and upper bounds on the probability of an incorrect decoding are derived. It was found that, if component codes of a multi-level modulation code and types of decoding at various stages are chosen properly, high spectral efficiency and large coding gain can be achieved with reduced decoding complexity. It was found that the difference in performance between the suboptimum multi-stage soft decision maximum likelihood decoding of a modulation code and the single stage optimum decoding of the overall code is very small, only a fraction of dB loss in SNR at the probability of an incorrect decoding for a block of 10(exp -6). Multi-stage decoding of multi-level modulation codes really offers a way to achieve the best of three worlds, bandwidth efficiency, coding gain, and decoding complexity.

Lin, Shu

Multi-stage decoding for multi-level block modulation codes

In this paper, we investigate various types of multi-stage decoding for multi-level block modulation codes, in which the decoding of a component code at each stage can be either soft-decision or hard-decision, maximum likelihood or bounded-distance. Error performance of codes is analyzed for a memoryless additive channel based on various types of multi-stage decoding, and upper bounds on the probability of an incorrect decoding are derived. Based on our study and computation results, we find that, if component codes of a multi-level modulation code and types of decoding at various stages are chosen properly, high spectral efficiency and large coding gain can be achieved with reduced decoding complexity. In particular, we find that the difference in performance between the suboptimum multi-stage soft-decision maximum likelihood decoding of a modulation code and the single-stage optimum decoding of the overall code is very small: only a fraction of dB loss in SNR at the probability of an incorrect decoding for a block of 10(exp -6). Multi-stage decoding of multi-level modulation codes really offers a way to achieve the best of three worlds, bandwidth efficiency, coding gain, and decoding complexity.

Lin, Shu

Second year technical report on-board processing for future satellite communications systems

Advanced baseband and microwave switching techniques for large domestic communications satellites operating in the 30/20 GHz frequency bands are discussed. The nominal baseband processor throughput is one million packets per second (1.6 Gb/s) from one thousand T1 carrier rate customer premises terminals. A frequency reuse factor of sixteen is assumed by using 16 spot antenna beams with the same 100 MHz bandwidth per beam and a modulation with a one b/s per Hz bandwidth efficiency. Eight of the beams are fixed on major metropolitan areas and eight are scanning beams which periodically cover the remainder of the U.S. under dynamic control. User signals are regenerated (demodulated/remodulated) and message packages are reformatted on board. Frequency division multiple access and time division multiplex are employed on the uplinks and downlinks, respectively, for terminals within the coverage area and dwell interval of a scanning beam. Link establishment and packet routing protocols are defined. Also described is a detailed design of a separate 100 x 100 microwave switch capable of handling nonregenerated signals occupying the remaining 2.4 GHz bandwidth with 60 dB of isolation, at an estimated weight and power consumption of approximately 400 kg and 100 W, respectively.

Brandon, W. T.

Geometric transformations for video compression and human teleoperator display

A method for bandwidth-efficient processing of video imagery to be viewed by the teleoperator of a remotely-operated vehicle on which the camera is mounted is described. The method comprises image coding, transmission, and reconstruction. It is assumed that the transmission bandpass is the limiting factor rather than encoding/decoding schemata; that image coding and reconstruction will be done within the general abilities of the NASA/TI Programmable Remapper; and that the ratio of retained local detail to the operator's visual resolution is held constant throughout the large-field image that is seen. Novel features include that the compression and reconstruction address certain characteristics of the human visual system, that two-way communication controls a moving 'fovea' in the transformation, and that resolution varies over the image. Conventional motivations accommodated include the Cartesian raster-scan nature of available imagers and display devices and a need for low bandwidth in the image transmission. Unique image processing hardware, NASA's Programmable Remapper, allows demonstration of the method. Once refined, the technology could be adapted to special purpose imagers and display devices, or otherwise to dedicated image processing hardware.

Juday, Richard D.

Error control techniques for satellite and space communications

High rate concatenated coding systems with trellis inner codes and Reed-Solomon (RS) outer codes for application in satellite communication systems are considered. Two types of inner codes are studied: high rate punctured binary convolutional codes which result in overall effective information rates between 1/2 and 1 bit per channel use; and bandwidth efficient signal space trellis codes which can achieve overall effective information rates greater than 1 bit per channel use. Channel capacity calculations with and without side information performed for the concatenated coding system. Concatenated coding schemes are investigated. In Scheme 1, the inner code is decoded with the Viterbi algorithm and the outer RS code performs error-correction only (decoding without side information). In scheme 2, the inner code is decoded with a modified Viterbi algorithm which produces reliability information along with the decoded output. In this algorithm, path metrics are used to estimate the entire information sequence, while branch metrics are used to provide the reliability information on the decoded sequence. This information is used to erase unreliable bits in the decoded output. An errors-and-erasures RS decoder is then used for the outer code. These two schemes are proposed for use on NASA satellite channels. Results indicate that high system reliability can be achieved with little or no bandwidth expansion.

Costello, D. J., Jr.

Power spectra of multi-h phase codes

A procedure is presented for calculating the power spectrum of the class of digital continuous-phase signals known as multi-h phase codes. These signals have been shown to have attractive power advantages over other uncoded digital schemes such as QPSK, and represent a bandwidth-efficient alternative to other coding techniques. The method is general, handling M-ary signaling, various frequency pulse shapes, and arbitrary sets of modulation indices. Numerical results are shown for several specific codes. In addition, the issue of spectral lines is resolved, and simple spectral approximations are developed.

Wilson, S. G.

Modulation/demodulation techniques for satellite communications. Part 2: Advanced techniques. The linear channel

A theory is presented for deducing and predicting the performance of transmitter/receivers for bandwidth efficient modulations suitable for use on the linear satellite channel. The underlying principle used is the development of receiver structures based on the maximum-likelihood decision rule. The application of the performance prediction tools, e.g., channel cutoff rate and bit error probability transfer function bounds to these modulation/demodulation techniques.

Omura, J. K.