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We present a rate 1/31 turbo code that achieves a bit error rate of 10(sup -6) at Eb/No = -0.9 db. At this coding gain, insufficient energy per symbol is present for a conventional receiver to recover the carrier phase properly. We present a method to overcome this problem by coupling the receiver and decoder functions.
been proposed for receiving weak single- channel phase-modulated radio signals bearing low-rate-turbo-coded binary data. Originally intended for use in receiving telemetry signals from distant spacecraft, the proposed receiver/ decoders may also provide enhanced reception in mobile radiotelephone systems. A radio signal of the type to which the proposal applies comprises a residual carrier signal and a phase-modulated data signal. The residual carrier signal is needed as a phase reference for demodulation as a prerequisite to decoding. Low-rate turbo codes afford high coding gains and thereby enable the extraction of data from arriving radio signals that might otherwise be too weak. In the case of a conventional receiver, if the signal-to-noise ratio (specifically, the symbol energy to one-sided noise power spectral density) of the arriving signal is below approximately 0 dB, then there may not be enough energy per symbol to enable the receiver to recover properly the carrier phase. One could solve the problem at the transmitter by diverting some power from the data signal to the residual carrier. A better solution . a coupled receiver/decoder according to the proposal . could reduce the needed amount of residual carrier power. In all that follows, it is to be understood that all processing would be digital and the incoming signals to be processed would be, more precisely, outputs of analog-to-digital converters that preprocess the residual carrier and data signals at a rate of multiple samples per symbol. The upper part of the figure depicts a conventional receiving system, in which the receiver and decoder are uncoupled, and which is also called a non-data-aided system because output data from the decoder are not used in the receiver to aid in recovering the carrier phase. The receiver tracks the carrier phase from the residual carrier signal and uses the carrier phase to wipe phase noise off the data signal. The receiver typically includes a phase-locked loop (PLL) or Costas loop that requires no delay or perhaps a single sample delay. The lower part of the figure depicts a basic coupled receiver/decoder . a data-aided system that would implement an iterative receiving/decoding process. The receiver would include a PLL or a Wiener filter that, to the extent possible, would track the residual carrier signal, wipe phase noise off the data signal, then send the result to the turbo decoder. Recovery of timing could be effected by, for example, a digital transition tracking loop (DTTL) or other, similar loop. The first iteration of turbo decoding would yield soft data symbols, which would be sent back to the receiver for use in softly wiping off the data signal in an effort to recover the residual carrier signal. The wiped signal would contain a relatively large carrier-phase component that could be tracked by use of a second Wiener filter.
This paper describes coupled receiver-decoder architectures for suppressed carrier convolutionally-coded signals and residual carrier turbo-coded signals.
CubeSats have grown in sophistication to the point that relatively low-cost mission solutions could be undertaken for planetary exploration. There are unique considerations for lunar and L1/L2 CubeSat communication and navigation compared with low earth orbit CubeSats. This paper explores those considerations as they relate to the Lunar IceCube Mission. The Lunar IceCube is a CubeSat mission led by Morehead State University with participation from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Busek Company and Vermont Tech. It will search for surface water ice and other resources from a high inclination lunar orbit. Lunar IceCube is one of a select group of CubeSats designed to explore beyond low-earth orbit that will fly on NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) as secondary payloads for Exploration Mission (EM) 1. Lunar IceCube and the EM-1 CubeSats will lay the groundwork for future lunar and L1/L2 CubeSat missions. This paper discusses communication and navigation needs for the Lunar IceCube mission and navigation and radiation tolerance requirements related to lunar and L1/L2 orbits. Potential CubeSat radios and antennas for such missions are investigated and compared. Ground station coverage, link analysis, and ground station solutions are also discussed. This paper will describe modifications in process for the Morehead ground station, as well as further enhancements of the Morehead ground station and NASA Near Earth Network (NEN) that are being considered. The potential NEN enhancements include upgrading current NEN Cortex receiver with Forward Error Correction (FEC) Turbo Code, providing X-band uplink capability, and adding ranging options. The benefits of ground station enhancements for CubeSats flown on NASA Exploration Missions (EM) are presented. This paper also describes how the NEN may support lunar and L1/L2 CubeSats without any enhancements. In addition, NEN is studying other initiatives to better support the CubeSat community, including streamlining the compatibility testing, planning and scheduling associated with CubeSat missions. Because of the lower cost, opportunity for simultaneous multipoint observations, it is inevitable that CubeSats will continue to increase in popularity for not only LEO missions, but for lunar and L1/L2 missions as well. The challenges for lunar and L1/L2 missions for communication and navigation are much greater than for LEO missions, but are not insurmountable. Advancements in flight hardware and ground infrastructure will ease the burden.
CubeSats have grown in sophistication to the point that relatively low-cost mission solutions could be undertaken for planetary exploration. There are unique considerations for Lunar and L1L2 CubeSat communication and navigation compared with low earth orbit CubeSats. This paper explores those considerations as they relate to the MoreheadGSFC Lunar IceCube Mission. The Lunar IceCube is a CubeSat mission led by Morehead State University with participation from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, JPL, the Busek Company and Vermont Tech. It will search for surface water ice and other resources from a high inclination lunar orbit. Lunar IceCube is one of a select group of CubeSats designed to explore beyond low-earth orbit that will fly on NASAs Space Launch System (SLS) as secondary payloads for Exploration Mission (EM) 1. Lunar IceCube and the EM-1 CubeSats will lay the groundwork for future lunar and L1L2 CubeSat missions. This paper discusses communication and navigation needs for the Lunar IceCube mission and navigation and radiation tolerance requirements related to lunar and L1L2 orbits. Potential CubeSat radio and antennas for such missions are investigated and compared. Ground station coverage, link analysis, and ground station solutions are also discussed. There are currently modifications in process for the Morehead ground station. Further enhancement of the Morehead ground station and the NASA Near Earth Network (NEN) are being examined. This paper describes how the NEN may support Lunar and L1L2 CubeSats without any enhancements and potential expansion of NEN to better support such missions in the future. The potential NEN enhancements include upgrading current NEN Cortex receiver with Forward Error Correction (FEC) Turbo Code, providing X-band Uplink capability, and adding ranging options. The benefits of ground station enhancements for CubeSats flown on NASA Exploration Missions (EM) are presented. The paper also discusses other initiatives that the NEN is studying to better support the CubeSat community, including streamlining the compatibility test, planning and scheduling associated with CubeSat missions.
Due to scarcity of spectrum at 8.42 GHz deep space Xband allocation, many deep space missions are now considering the use of higher order modulation schemes instead of the traditional binary phase shift keying (BPSK). One such scheme is pre-coded Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK). GMSK is an excellent candidate for deep space missions. GMSK is a constant envelope, bandwidth efficien modulation whose frame error rate (FER) performance with perfect carrier tracking and proper receiver structure is nearly identical to that of BPSK. There are several issues that need to be addressed with GMSK however. Specificall, we are interested in the combined effects of spectrum limitations and receiver structure on the coded performance of the X-band link using GMSK. The receivers that are typically used for GMSK demodulations are variations on offset quadrature phase shift keying (OQPSK) receivers. In this paper we consider three receivers: the standard DSN OQPSK receiver, DSN OQPSK receiver with filte ed input, and an optimum OQPSK receiver with filte ed input. For the DSN OQPSK receiver we show experimental results with (8920, 1/2), (8920, 1/3) and (8920, 1/6) turbo codes in terms of their error rate performance. We also consider the tracking performance of this receiver as a function of data rate, channel code and the carrier loop signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). For the other two receivers we derive theoretical results that will show that for a given loop bandwidth, a receiver structure, and a channel code, there is a lower data rate limit on the GMSK below which a higher SNR than what is required to achieve the required FER on the link is needed. These limits stem from the minimum loop signal-to-noise ratio requirements on the receivers for achieving lock. As a result of this, for a given channel code and a given FER, there could be a gap between the maximum data rate that BPSK can support without violating the spectrum limits and the minimum data rate that GMSK can support with the required FER depending on the type of GMSK receiver that is used.
In this report, we present the results of our recent work on turbo coding in two formats. Appendix A includes the overheads of a talk that has been given at four different locations over the last eight months. This presentation has received much favorable comment from the research community and has resulted in the full-length paper included as Appendix B, 'A Distance Spectrum Interpretation of Turbo Codes'. Turbo codes use a parallel concatenation of rate 1/2 convolutional encoders combined with iterative maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) decoding to achieve a bit error rate (BER) of 10(exp -5) at a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of only 0.7 dB. The channel capacity for a rate 1/2 code with binary phase shift-keyed modulation on the AWGN (additive white Gaussian noise) channel is 0 dB, and thus the Turbo coding scheme comes within 0.7 DB of capacity at a BER of 10(exp -5).
A new deep space transponder is being developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA. The Spacecraft Transponding Modem (STM) implements the standard transponder functions and the channel service functions that have previously resided in spacecraft Command/Data Subsystems. The STM uses custom ASICs, MMICs, and MCMs to reduce the active device parts count to 70, mass to I kg, and volume to 524 cc. The first STMs will be flown on missions launching in the 2003 time frame. The STM tracks an X-band uplink signal and provides both X-band and Ka-band downlinks, either coherent or non-coherent with the uplink. A NASA standard Command Detector Unit is integrated into the STM, along with a codeblock processor and a hardware command decoder. The decoded command codeblocks are output to the spacecraft command/data subsystem. Virtual Channel 0 (VC-0) (hardware) commands are processed and output as critical controller (CRC) commands. Downlink telemetry is received from the spacecraft data subsystem as telemetry frames. The STM provides the following downlink coding options: the standard CCSDS (7-1/2) convolutional coding, ReedSolomon coding with interleave depths one and five, (15-1/6) convolutional coding, and Turbo coding with rates 1/3 and 1/6. The downlink symbol rates can be linearly ramped to match the G/T curve of the receiving station, providing up to a 1 dB increase in data return. Data rates range from 5 bits per second (bps) to 24 Mbps, with three modulation modes provided: modulated subcarrier (3 different frequencies provided), biphase-L modulated direct on carrier, and Offset QPSK. Also, the capability to generate one of four non-harmonically related telemetry beacon tones is provided, to allow for a simple spacecraft status monitoring scheme for cruise phases of missions. Three ranging modes are provided: standard turn around ranging, regenerative pseudo-noise (PN) ranging, and Differential One-way Ranging (DOR) tones. The regenerative ranging provides the capability of increasing the ground received ranging SNR by up to 30 dB. Two different avionics interfaces to the command/data subsystem's data bus are provided: a MIL STD 1553B bus or an industry standard PCI interface. Digital interfaces provide the capability to control antenna selection (e.g., switching between high gain and low gain antennas) and antenna pointing (for future steered Ka-band antennas).
Equations for computing tight bounds on error rates for coded pulse-position modulation (PPM) on a Poisson channel at high signal-to-noise ratio have been derived. These equations and elements of the underlying theory are expected to be especially useful in designing codes for PPM optical communication systems. The equations and the underlying theory apply, more specifically, to a case in which a) At the transmitter, a linear outer code is concatenated with an inner code that includes an accumulator and a bit-to-PPM-symbol mapping (see figure) [this concatenation is known in the art as "accumulate-PPM" (abbreviated "APPM")]; b) The transmitted signal propagates on a memoryless binary-input Poisson channel; and c) At the receiver, near-maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding is effected through an iterative process. Such a coding/modulation/decoding scheme is a variation on the concept of turbo codes, which have complex structures, such that an exact analytical expression for the performance of a particular code is intractable. However, techniques for accurately estimating the performances of turbo codes have been developed. The performance of a typical turbo code includes (1) a "waterfall" region consisting of a steep decrease of error rate with increasing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at low to moderate SNR, and (2) an "error floor" region with a less steep decrease of error rate with increasing SNR at moderate to high SNR. The techniques used heretofore for estimating performance in the waterfall region have differed from those used for estimating performance in the error-floor region. For coded PPM, prior to the present derivations, equations for accurate prediction of the performance of coded PPM at high SNR did not exist, so that it was necessary to resort to time-consuming simulations in order to make such predictions. The present derivation makes it unnecessary to perform such time-consuming simulations.
Serial concatenated trellis coded modulation (SCTCM) includes an outer coder, an interleaver, a recursive inner coder and a mapping element. The outer coder receives data to be coded and produces outer coded data. The interleaver permutes the outer coded data to produce interleaved data. The recursive inner coder codes the interleaved data to produce inner coded data. The mapping element maps the inner coded data to a symbol. The recursive inner coder has a structure which facilitates iterative decoding of the symbols at a decoder system. The recursive inner coder and the mapping element are selected to maximize the effective free Euclidean distance of a trellis coded modulator formed from the recursive inner coder and the mapping element. The decoder system includes a demodulation unit, an inner SISO (soft-input soft-output) decoder, a deinterleaver, an outer SISO decoder, and an interleaver.
Serial concatenated trellis coded modulation (SCTCM) includes an outer coder, an interleaver, a recursive inner coder and a mapping element. The outer coder receives data to be coded and produces outer coded data. The interleaver permutes the outer coded data to produce interleaved data. The recursive inner coder codes the interleaved data to produce inner coded data. The mapping element maps the inner coded data to a symbol. The recursive inner coder has a structure which facilitates iterative decoding of the symbols at a decoder system. The recursive inner coder and the mapping element are selected to maximize the effective free Euclidean distance of a trellis coded modulator formed from the recursive inner coder and the mapping element. The decoder system includes a demodulation unit, an inner SISO (soft-input soft-output) decoder, a deinterleaver, an outer SISO decoder, and an interleaver.
In this paper we propose an innovative coded modulation scheme called 'Accumulate Repeat Accumulate Coded Modulation' (ARA coded modulation). This class of codes can be viewed as serial turbo-like codes, or as a subclass of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes that are combined with high level modulation. Thus at the decoder belief propagation can be used for iterative decoding of ARA coded modulation on a graph, provided a demapper transforms the received in-phase and quadrature samples to reliability of the bits.
Topics covered include: Scheme for Entering Binary Data Into a Quantum Computer; Encryption for Remote Control via Internet or Intranet; Coupled Receiver/Decoders for Low-Rate Turbo Codes; Processing GPS Occultation Data To Characterize Atmosphere; Displacing Unpredictable Nulls in Antenna Radiation Patterns; Integrated Pointing and Signal Detector for Optical Receiver; Adaptive Thresholding and Parameter Estimation for PPM; Data-Driven Software Framework for Web-Based ISS Telescience; Software for Secondary-School Learning About Robotics; Fuzzy Logic Engine; Telephone-Directory Program; Simulating a Direction-Finder Search for an ELT; Formulating Precursors for Coating Metals and Ceramics; Making Macroscopic Assemblies of Aligned Carbon Nanotubes; Ball Bearings Equipped for In Situ Lubrication on Demand; Synthetic Bursae for Robots; Robot Forearm and Dexterous Hand; Making a Metal-Lined Composite-Overwrapped Pressure Vessel; Ex Vivo Growth of Bioengineered Ligaments and Other Tissues; Stroboscopic Goggles for Reduction of Motion Sickness; Articulating Support for Horizontal Resistive Exercise; Modified Penning-Malmberg Trap for Storing Antiprotons; Tumbleweed Rovers; Two-Photon Fluorescence Microscope for Microgravity Research; Biased Randomized Algorithm for Fast Model-Based Diagnosis; Fast Algorithms for Model-Based Diagnosis; Simulations of Evaporating Multicomponent Fuel Drops; Formation Flying of Tethered and Nontethered Spacecraft; and Two Methods for Efficient Solution of the Hitting- Set Problem.
An advanced communication system has been proposed for transmitting and receiving coded digital data conveyed as a form of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) signals in the presence of such adverse propagation-channel effects as large dynamic Doppler shifts and frequency-selective multipath fading. Such adverse channel effects are typical of data communications between mobile units or between mobile and stationary units (e.g., telemetric transmissions from aircraft to ground stations). The proposed system incorporates novel signal processing techniques intended to reduce the losses associated with adverse channel effects while maintaining compatibility with the high-speed physical layer specifications defined for wireless local area networks (LANs) as the standard 802.11a of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE 802.11a). OFDM is a multi-carrier modulation technique that is widely used for wireless transmission of data in LANs and in metropolitan area networks (MANs). OFDM has been adopted in IEEE 802.11a and some other industry standards because it affords robust performance under frequency-selective fading. However, its intrinsic frequency-diversity feature is highly sensitive to synchronization errors; this sensitivity poses a challenge to preserve coherence between the component subcarriers of an OFDM system in order to avoid intercarrier interference in the presence of large dynamic Doppler shifts as well as frequency-selective fading. As a result, heretofore, the use of OFDM has been limited primarily to applications involving small or zero Doppler shifts. The proposed system includes a digital coherent OFDM communication system that would utilize enhanced 802.1la-compatible signal-processing algorithms to overcome effects of frequency-selective fading and large dynamic Doppler shifts. The overall transceiver design would implement a two-frequency-channel architecture (see figure) that would afford frequency diversity for reducing the adverse effects of multipath fading. By using parallel concatenated convolutional codes (also known as Turbo codes) across the dual-channel and advanced OFDM signal processing within each channel, the proposed system is intended to achieve at least an order of magnitude improvement in received signal-to-noise ratio under adverse channel effects while preserving spectral efficiency.
A very-large-scale-integrated-circuit (VLSI) turbo decoder has been designed to serve as a compact, high-throughput, low-power, lightweight decoder core of a receiver in a data-communication system. In a typical contemplated application, such a decoder core would be part of a single integrated circuit that would include the rest of the receiver circuitry and possibly some or all of the transmitter circuitry, all designed and fabricated together according to an advanced communication-system-on-a-chip design concept. Turbo codes are forward-error-correction (FEC) codes. Relative to older FEC codes, turbo codes enable communication at lower signal-to-noise ratios and offer greater coding gain. In addition, turbo codes can be implemented by relatively simple hardware. Therefore, turbo codes have been adopted as standard for some advanced broadband communication systems.
Several improved turbo code apparatuses and methods. The invention encompasses several classes: (1) A data source is applied to two or more encoders with an interleaver between the source and each of the second and subsequent encoders. Each encoder outputs a code element which may be transmitted or stored. A parallel decoder provides the ability to decode the code elements to derive the original source information d without use of a received data signal corresponding to d. The output may be coupled to a multilevel trellis-coded modulator (TCM). (2) A data source d is applied to two or more encoders with an interleaver between the source and each of the second and subsequent encoders. Each of the encoders outputs a code element. In addition, the original data source d is output from the encoder. All of the output elements are coupled to a TCM. (3) At least two data sources are applied to two or more encoders with an interleaver between each source and each of the second and subsequent encoders. The output may be coupled to a TCM. (4) At least two data sources are applied to two or more encoders with at least two interleavers between each source and each of the second and subsequent encoders. (5) At least one data source is applied to one or more serially linked encoders through at least one interleaver. The output may be coupled to a TCM. The invention includes a novel way of terminating a turbo coder.
The NASA Orion O2O mission was designed and tested to support high-rate bi-directional optical communications between one of multiple ground sites and a crewed capsule during a 10-day mission. This paper focuses on the design and performance of the receiver that will be based at the NASA White Sands Complex, New Mexico, USA. The main receiver components consist of two 40-cm apertures, each coupled to a specialty multi-mode optical fiber; each fiber coupled to a custom array of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors; a high-speed, high-channel-count time-to-digital converter; and custom digitizing electronics to perform deserialization, demodulation, clock recovery, and forward error correction with a powerful serially-concatenated pulse-position-modulation turbo code. We show error-free data communication performance up to the maximum required data rate of 267 Mb/s.
The Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration Consequence Management Program was contacted by the Health Physics Chief of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) to review public radiation exposure calculations for an event that occurred on its Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus on February 3, 2021. Subject matter experts from the Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) assets, specifically the Consequence Management Home Team (CMHT) and the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC), were selected to provide support. CMHT used three separate modeling codes to validate the results the scientists at NCNR calculated using the HotSpot model. The analyses were performed using NARAC’s in-house Lagrangian dispersion codes known as LODI and Aeolus, as well as the Turbo FRMAC software from Sandia National Laboratories. The team used parameters provided by the NCNR scientists regarding the site, applicable observable meteorological data, and environmental survey and sampling data to estimate public exposure. Each model estimated public dose at much less than 0.5 mrem. CMHT concurs with the NCNR public radiation exposure calculations which state that members of the public at the 400-meter boundary would have received a radiological dose of less than 0.5 mrem.