ON IMPLEMENTATION OF REMOTELY OPERATED UNMANNED TELEMETRY TRACKING SYSTEMS WITH FIBER OPTIC CABLE

Abstract

The high cost of real estate in countries with expanding populations, coupled with the long range capability of modern weapon systems has resulted in the need to expand test ranges to remote desert areas or areas over sea water. In order to preclude the cost of duplicating existing test centers, and the high cost of manually operating ground tracking stations, the requirement for unmanned remotely controlled telemetry tracking systems has emerged. Until recently, implementation of such systems has been trivial because the microwave link had sufficient bandwidth. However, with the advent of multi-TM bands, encrypted T.V. video and dual-polarization diversity requirements, implementation of unmanned remote stations has become cumbersome, expensive and less reliable. For instance, a pair of dedicated computers are now required to remotely control as many as eight receivers and four diversity combiners. This paper analyzes the advantages, limitations and feasibility of remotely controlling a wide-band antenna/pedestal with the restriction that all frequency downconverters, receivers, and combiners be located at the test center where they can be manually controlled and monitored, and more readily maintained. A comparison is made between the use of coaxial cable and fiber-optic cable as short-haul (0.25 to 25 kilometers) RF transmission media.