HELICOPTER BORNE TELEMETRY DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM FOR DOWN RANGE APPLICATIONS

Abstract

The terminal phase telemetry data acquisition has always been a challenging task especially for long and medium range test launches. The task becomes more complicated if the article under test describes a very low altitude cruise terminal phase trajectory. Generally, for long and medium range missions test fired into sea the terminal phase data is acquired by deploying instrumented ships in the vicinity of impact point but beyond the safety corridor. But for long range missions with low altitude cruise terminal phase trajectory and wide safety corridor this conventional approach will not work out because of limitation of LOS from the ship platforms. Hence, for such applications an air borne telemetry receiving system is also to be added to the down range instrumentation network. This paper describes a typical and cost effective air borne system realized utilizing the Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) products and technology. This paper also addresses as to how the signal scattering problems are tackled in the design implementation.