MLS: keeping pace with the future

It is argued that the instrument landing system (ILS) is now at its operational limit in terms of radio frequency availability, approach flexibility, and technology. The operational requirements for a microwave landing system (MLS), which will overcome key limitations of the ILS and provide growth to meet future requirements of precision landing systems, are discussed, John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport and LaGuardia Airport in New York City are discussed as examples to demonstrate the capabilities of MLS     

Capacities of mobile air/ground radio communication systemsemploying cylindrical cells

Cylindrical cells represent actual service volumes used in terminal areas (airports) for air traffic control (ATC) communications between pilots and ground controllers. The channel capacities of simplex and duplex frequency division multiplexing (FDM) mobile air/ground (A/G) radio communication systems employing cylindrical cells are compared assuming a network of identical cylindrical cells and a dedicated radio channel per group of aircraft and its ground controller. The two systems are compared considering both cochannel and adjacent channel interferences for analog and digital modulation. Then, capacities of duplex FDM and code division multiplexing (CDM) are compared under the same assumptions for digital modulation. The capacity of FDM depends mainly on the frequency reuse distance while the capacity of CDM is limited by the self users interference. This work shows that the capacity ratio of duplex and simplex FDM systems depends on the cell dimensions. It also shows that considering ATC requirements, FDM provides a higher capacity than CDM for all the cell dimension ranges considered     

Software radios: Survey, critical evaluation and future directions

A software radio is defined as a set of digital signal processing (DSP) primitives, a metalevel system for combining the primitives into communication system functions (transmitter, channel model, receiver, etc.), and a set of target processors on which the software radio is hosted for real-time communications. The performance of enabling hardware technologies is related to software radio requirements, portending a decade of shift from hardware radios toward software intensive approaches. Computational models and architecture are discussed, stressing the need for topological consistency of radio functions and host architectures. A layered topology-oriented design approach encapsulated in a canonical open architecture software radio model is presented. The model provides a unified mathematical framework for quantitative analysis of algorithm structures, host architectures, and system performance for CAD     

1553 emulation over ATM (asynchronous transfer mode)-a hybridavionics communications architecture

The issue of meeting the higher communications requirements of future aircraft avionics systems in an incremental manner is addressed. A communications architecture is proposed which is based upon a switched network technology from the telecommunications area asynchronous transfer mode (ATM). However, the major step of migrating all existing avionics equipment into an ATM compliant form is avoided by the process of “emulating” a current avionics data bus such as MIL-STD-1553B over an ATM network. This allows current 1553 subsystems to co-exist with ATM compliant equipment on a single physical ATM network     

空间交会对接多体制接收机设计与实现简

空间交会对接时,空空通信系统需在两个航天器之间建立双向通信链路,完成两者间的信息交换.在载人航天交会对接任务中,空空通信系统担负交会对接段以及撤离段航天器间的双向链路数据传输任务.针对不同的任务模式、分析不同信号的解调模型和算法特点,基于软件无线电技术确定本系统的全数字化解调算法和硬件平台设计方案,实现过程运用复用/优化设计思路,节省了逻辑资源、降低了算法复杂度.对关键指标的测试表明,该设计可满足空空通信系统的指标需求.     

Compact equipment for on-board communications subsystem supervisoryand control system

Onboard equipment for the communications subsystem supervisory and control (CSC) system of a next-generation multibeam high-capacity communications satellite is discussed. In order to keep the equipment as compact, lightweight, and low in power consumption as possible, an onboard data bus system using four kinds of LSIs was developed. It will be carried on-board the Japanese Engineering Test Satellite VI for launch in 1993. Configuration and functions of the CSC equipment, design philosophy of the LSIs, and characteristics of the LSIs developed are discussed     

Communication system architecture for planetary exploration

Future human missions to Mars will require effective communications supporting exploration activities and scientific field data collection. Constraints on cost, size, weight, and power consumption for all communications equipment make optimization of these systems very important. These information and communication systems connect people and systems together into coherent teams performing the difficult and hazardous tasks inherent in planetary exploration. The communication network supporting vehicle telemetry data, mission operations, and scientific collaboration must have excellent reliability and flexibility. We propose hybrid communication architectures consisting of space-based links, a surface-based deployable mid-range communications network and a cluster of short-range links to solve the problems of connectivity and bandwidth, while meeting the other constraints of weight and power. A network of orbiting satellites could cover much of the planet surface, but this space-based capability may not be optimal for cost or performance. Specifically, a minimal space-based capability can be augmented using mobile cellular repeaters deployable by robots and human EVA. This method results in an increase in the number of radio nodes, but the distances separating them is decreased. This results in a significant increase in bandwidth and decrease in radio power, and therefore, node size, complexity, and power consumption. This paper will discuss the results of field testing such hybrid radio systems for the support of scientific surveys. System analysis of design tradeoffs will yield insight into optimal solutions that will be compared to other approaches providing a method of effectively evaluating new candidate architectures     

MILDATA?A Study of Post-1975 Command Control Information Systems

MILDATA was an Army-sponsored exploratory development study in the area of digital computer technology. Its objective was to explore and evaluate new organizational concepts for hardware and software in a tactical command control information system (CCIS) and to develop new measures of effectiveness and methods for evaluating system performance. It was assumed that the MILDATA system would be operational in the field army during the time frame 1975-1985. A unique feature of the MILDATA concept is an unprecedented degree of modularity which provides flexibility to fulfill a wide variety of tactical data processing requirements. This paper supplies necessary background on CCIS requirements and develops modular design criteria. It then summarizes MILDATA study requirements and the general nature of the results obtained and outlines a program of future work. Finally, an attempt is made to systematize the experience gained during MILDATA as an aid to the organization of future exploratory development studies.     

New Developments in Radar and Radio Sensors for Aircraft Navigation

Recent developments in airborne Doppler and ground mapping navigation radars and ground and satellite based radio systems are described. Simultaneous lobing and slope tracking techniques can remove the well-known Doppler sea bias error in fast and slowly moving vehicles. Doppler velocity information can be extracted from coherent forward-looking mapping radars, and high position fixing accuracy can be achieved by synthetic aperture radars. In radio navigation systems, such as Loran, Omega, and satellite systems, direct-ranging and differential techniques greatly reduce the geometric dilution and propagation effects which have plagued conventional radio navigation systems. The advantages gained by mixing of the data from these and other navigation sensors in a digital multisensor system are discussed and approaches for processing these data are suggested.     

Performance evaluation of digital beamforming strategies for satellite communications

Smart antennas are becoming one of the promising technologies to meet the rapidly increasing demands for more capacity of satellite communication systems. A main component in a smart antenna system is beamforming. Because of the limitations of analog beamforming, digital beamforming will be employed in future satellite communication systems. We evaluate the performance of various digital beamforming strategies proposed in the literature for satellite communications: 1) single fixed beam/single user, 2) single fixed beam/multiple users, 3) single adaptive beam/single user, and 4) single Chebyshev dynamic beam/multiple users. Multiple criteria including coverage, system capacity, signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), and computation complexity are used to evaluate these satellite communication beamforming strategies. In particular, a Ka-band satellite communication system is used to address the various issues of these beamforming strategies. For the adaptive beamforming approach, subarray structure is used to obtain the weights of a large 2D antenna array, and a globally convergent recurrent neural network (RNN) is proposed to realize the adaptive beamforming algorithm in parallel. The new subarray-based neural beamforming algorithm can reduce the computation complexity greatly, and is more effective than the conventional least mean square (LMS) beamforming approach. It is shown that the single adaptive beam/single user approach has the highest system capacity.     

Iridium(R) aeronautical satellite communications

The ever-increasing demand to stay in touch, to be able to communicate anywhere and anytime, has created a market for low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications services such as the Iridium system. The Iridium satellite communications network is being developed to support the needs of the passenger, the cabin crew and the flight crew for: aeronautical public correspondence (APC); aeronautical administrative communications (AAC); aeronautical operational control (AOC); and air traffic services (ATS)     

Distributed flight control system using fiber distributed datainterface (FDDI)

The design of fault-tolerant distributed control systems is discussed. The application described is a generic flight control system (FCS) for a fighter aircraft. The system is designed for high redundancy and expandability to meet various requirements. The communication network is based on the fiber distributed data interface (FDDI), which provides a high level of electromagnetic interference resistance and reliability. The choice of fiber optic media also provides an extremely high bandwidth and tremendous growth capability for future communications needs. This study is not specific to FDDI or flight control systems. The methods and configurations presented should be applicable to many real-time control implementations     

High Power Needs for Commercial Satellites

This overview paper presents estimates of the photovoltaic power systems needed on commercial communications spacecraft in the year 2000. These are developed in the form of power requirements based on extrapolation of the historical growth in communications traffic and are about 5 to 15 kW. The paper also addresses the key technology drivers in these photovoltaic systems. The importance of reducing mass in the power system is described in terms of the tradeoff with communications systems mass to maximize communications revenue. It surveys solar array components and subsystems to meet these future requirements and attempts to identify the development candidates with a large payoff potential and a high probability of successful development.     

30/20 GHz Band Small Earth Station for ISSDN Experiment

The system design and operational results of a 30/20 GHz band small Earth station for integrated services satellite digital network (ISSDN) experiments are presented. The Earth station has a high efficiency offset Cassegrain antenna with elliptical beam, a high power klystron amplifier with 1 kW output power and an uncooled parametric low noise amplifier with 200 K noise temperature. Experiments were performed using the medium capacity communications satellite for experimental purposes (CS). Performance on the Earth station was high. Effective radiation power (ERP) was greater than 88.1 dBW, and the receiving figure of merit (G/T) was larger than 30.6 dB/K. Good transmission characteristics were obtained through the satellite link for demand assigned time-division multiple access (DA-TDMA) with 20 Mbit/s bit rate.     

High accuracy navigation and landing system using GPS/IMU systemintegration

In this paper, the accuracy, integrity and continuity of function requirements for automatic landing systems using satellite navigation systems are discussed. Such a landing system is the integrated navigation and landing system (INLS) developed by Deutsche Aerospace (DASA/Ulm, Germany). The system concepts of the INLS are presented. It is shown how an INLS, based on system integration of a satellite navigation system (e.g., GPS) in realtime differential mode with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) in the accuracy class of an attitude and heading reference system (AHRS), can meet the requirements: the results given are mainly devoted to the accuracy issues. Using Kalman filter techniques, an in-flight calibration of the IMU is performed. The advantage of system integration, especially in dynamic flight conditions and during phases of flight with satellite masking, is explained. The accuracy, integrity and continuity of function of the INLS were proven by means of flight tests in a commuter aircraft using a laser tracker as a reference. These flight tests have shown that the short-term accuracy (<60 seconds) of the AHRS used within the INLS has been improved from low cost sensor quality to the accuracy of a high quality laser inertial navigation system (LNIS). With the presented INLS, a landing at any airfield, not equipped with conventional Instrument Landing System (ILS) or Microwave Landing System (MLS), is possible by using a very cost effective system. The INLS is a high accuracy navigation and landing system designed to be used instead of conventional landing systems at small airfields and to fill operational gaps of conventional navigation and landing systems in cruise and approach on large airports     

Commercial aviation VDL choices

The purpose of this study was to analyze digital data link communications technologies in a line-of-sight environment. Because there is a global debate over selecting the next generation VHF data link (VDL) technology, this paper evaluates each of them for the terminal and enroute airspace only. First, this study provides a historical review of the purpose of data link applications; second, how the current system is failing to meet today's requirements, leading to problems within the US National Air Space (NAS); third, a technical and economic analysis of VDL technologies; and last, a recommendation for selecting a VDL technology.     

Digital air/ground communications for air traffic control

The early 1990's communications for air traffic control (ATC) uses analog single channel radios with conventional amplitude modulation (AM) in the very high frequency (VHF) band. To overcome eventual saturation of the current system, a sample “next generation” ATC communications system has been designed to increase capabilities and provide a graceful transition from the current system. The new ATC communication system must address problems with the modulation format and a balance between increased channel capacity and overall cost. The controller/pilot workloads can be reduced in that the information segments allow for either semi-automatic or fully automatic handoff or frequency change. The principal performance factor is the addition of data, fully integrated with voice, while offering an increase in throughput. The architecture is structured to put priority on the uplink voice messages while offering significant information capacity capabilities for external data sources. When digital data and voice communication systems mature in the ATC environment, a natural evolution to more data traffic and less voice will occur. At that time, a simple restructuring of the channel assignments and priorities could offer increased throughput for connection to ground based data sources such as high capacity routers     

DF Vectoring: Application to Stationary Synchronous Satellites

Several methods of using an earth-based radio reference signal to determine the three-axis attitude of a synchronous satellite, and two types of spacecraft electronic systems (amplitude measurement and phase measurement), which obtain attitude and pointing information from the radio reference signal for orientating the spacecraft and for directing large-aperture antennas aboard the spacecraft are described. The earth-based radio reference signal also enables the electronic systems to determine angles to other ground stations with respect to fixed (reference) stations on the earth. These attitude- and angle-determining techniques are applicable to communications satellites, navigational satellites, and intersatellite data relay systems.     

Networks of low-Earth orbit store-and-forward satellites

A slotted multiaccess protocol is proposed for networks of low-Earth orbit store-and-forward communications satellites. Networks of this type would provide communication between low cost geographically distributed Earth stations, and would be particularly attractive in areas where conventional terrestrial communications systems were not available. Applications of this type include data acquisition and remote process monitoring. The proposed protocol incorporates time division multiplexing (TDM) on the downlink, slotted Aloha with collision resolution on the uplink, and an automatic repeat request (ARQ) algorithm. Since the network connectivity is intermittent, analysis of networks of this type is difficult. Nevertheless, relationships among the performance parameters for a general network are deduced, and performance of three particular network configurations is studied via simulation