An Integrated Approach to Telemetry Ground Stations Using Distributed Processing

Abstract

Telemetry data processing ground stations commonly unite dissimilar equipment into what is often a large disjoint series of synchronizers, specialized front end processors, and high performance back end data processors. With a few basic building blacks, small-tolarge uniform systems are being built that avoid this problem while hiding the task size from the end user yet allowing flexibility in the data acquisition and processing. This discussion focuses on the implementation of an integrated telemetry processing system with varying levels of complexity. The discussion covers the full spectrum from the simple processing element (single pc board) to the data processing substation (single instrument) to a full load sharing, redundant, distributed system (network of substations). Each level utilizes a different form of distributed processing yet adheres to an overall philosophy of date flow as opposed to fixed instruction sequencing.