A 200 Megabit Per Second Data Handling/Data Link Simulator

Abstract

A multimegabit serial data channel, or slower parallel channels may be needed to monitor multiple input data (including video) from sources such as Earth Resources Experiments, Communication Satellites, and surveillance systems. It is desirable to operate space equipment at low power, which is contrary to the use of fast circuits. Low powered circuits are compatible with the speeds of parallel systems, but multiple channel RF systems are usually costly in both size and weight. A parallel series compromise appears to minimize these problems. A laboratory breadboard of a parallel-series data handling simulator consisting of a data acquisition unit (DAU), a 200 Mb/s serial data link (SDL), and a data recovery unit (DRU) was built and tested to operate satisfactorily up to 230 Mb/s in a typical noisy environment.