PACKET-BASED TELEMETRY NETWORKS OVER LEGACY SYSTEMS

Abstract

The telemetry industry anticipates the tremendous potential value of adding full networking capability to telemetry systems. However, much of this potential can be realized while working with legacy equipment. By adding modules that interface transparently to existing equipment, continuous telemetry data can be encapsulated in discrete packets for over the air transmission. Packet fields can include header, sequence number and bytes for error detection and correction. The RF packet is transmitted without gaps through a standard serial interface and rate adjusted for the packet overhead – effectively making packetization transparent to a legacy system. The receiver unit performs packet synchronization, error correction, extraction of stream quality metrics and re-encapsulation of the payload data into an internet protocol (IP) packet. These standard packets can then be sent over the existing network transport system to the range control center. At the range control center, the extracted stream quality metrics are used to select the best telemetry source in real-time. This paper provides a general discussion of the path to a fully realized, packet-based telemetry network and a brief but comprehensive overview of the Hypernet system architecture as a case study.