COMMERCIAL-OFF-THE-SHELF TELEMETRY FRONT-END PROTOTYPING

Abstract

The world of data communication and networking has grown rapidly over the last decade, and this growth has been accompanied by the development of standards that reflect and facilitate the need for commercial products that work together in a reliable, robust, and coherent fashion. To a great extent this commercialization, with its increasing performance and diminishing cost, has not been adapted to the data communication needs of satellites. As budgets and mission development and deployment timelines shrink, space exploration and science will require the development of standards and the use of increasing amounts of off-the-shelf hardware and software for integrated satellite ground systems. The Renaissance project at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center has engaged in rapid prototyping of ground systems using off-the-shelf hardware and software products to identify ways of implementing satellite ground systems "faster, better, cheaper". This paper presents various aspects of these activities, including issues related to the configuration and integration of current off-the-shelf products using telemetry databases for existing spacecraft, an analysis of issues related to the development of standard products for satellite communication, tradeoffs between hardware and software approaches to performing telemetry front-end processing functions, and proposals for future standards and development.