A SOFTWARE APPROACH TO MARS-II DIGITALLY RECORDED TELEMETRY

Abstract

The MARS-II digital recorder is one of the new technologies that will eventually replace the labor intensive and hardware dependent methods associated with traditional analog-based telemetry ground systems. The Standardized MARS-II Analysis and Reduction Tool (SMART) is one of the first software systems developed to take advantage of this new digital recording capability. It processes pulse code modulated (PCM) encoded data and MIL-STD-1553B message traffic, outputting time-tagged PCM frames or 1553 messages to file. The goal of this software is to provide a portable application that utilizes state-ofhe-art, general purpose hardware for rapid telemetry data processing to meet the needs of operational users, telemetry engineers, and data analysts. To satisfy these goals, the software was developed using the C language with VMS and OSF operating systems as the initially targeted platforms. In addition, an X Window System/Motif graphical user interface supporting three tiers of user interaction (operator, telemetry engineer, and telemetry analyst) was layered onto the decommutator functions.