SBIR-STTR Award

The proposed effort will result in a data formatter that will have the capability to significantly improve the bit rate efficiencies of Pulse Code Modulated data telemetered form test vehicles. The key features of the formatter required to accomplish this are: 1) the ability to generate bit rates that closely match data requirements 2) the ability to support formats created by software algorithms such as those under development by the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, California. The Phase I effort will concentrate on defining performance requirements for a data formatter, as well as its conceptual design. The performance requirements will be derived from trade studies, conducted jointly with the customer, involving technical feasibility and risk versus potential benefits and practical limitations. This will insure the result represents the right balance between compatibility with existing infrastructure and standards and growth features needed to support new data acquisition architectures and evolving infrastructure and standards. Killdeer Mountain Manufacturing will direct the Phase I effort using the Boeing Company as a consultant. The two companies possess the unique and diverse experience, knowledge, skills and resources to solve Phase I problems and produce the hardware implementations needed for Phase II and III.

The Bit Rate Agile Onboard Telemetry Formatter (Braotf) proposed for phase II development has the potential to present a hardware solution to the problem of telemetry format efficiency. To-date most of the effort to generate efficient formats has been software oriented. However, the limiting factors to telemetry format efficiency tend to be imposed by the hardware frame and word structure requirements. This occurs both in the onboard equipment, and in the documentation equipment. Therefore, a hardware package was sought by the United States Air Force Flight Test Center to overcome the hardware limitations imposed by existing telemetry data systems so that the format generation software does not experience the constraints imposed by the physical data systems. The BRAOTF proposed for Phase II can overcome these limitations by processing the incoming telemetry stream from the onboard data system and generating a thinned (or lean) output stream for telemetry. The legact data system is programmed with a IRIG format. However, the BRAOTF is programmed with an optimized format, which will choose the desired bits from the incoming data stream. The proposed effort consists of a 12 month design phase, an 8 month implemention phase, and a 4 month demonstration phase.

Keywords:
Braotflean Telemetry Pcm Legacy Data Systems Thinned Data Stream Irig Ccsds Open Architecture