High-Level Language Programming Environment for Parallel Real-Time Telemetry Processor

Abstract

The difficulty of incorporating custom real-time processing into a conventional telemetry system frustrates many design engineers. Custom algorithms such as data compression/conversion, software decommutation, signal processing or sensitive defense related algorithms, are often executed on expensive and time-consuming mainframe computers during post-processing. The cost to implement such algorithms on real-time hardware is greater, because programming for such hardware is usually done in assembly language or microcode, resulting in: * The need for specially trained software specialists * Long and often unpredictable development time * Poor maintainability * Non-portability to new applications or hardware. This paper presents an alternative to host-based, post-processing telemetry systems. The Loral System 500 offers an easy to use, high-level language programming environment that couples real-time performance with fast development time, portability and easy maintenance. Targeted to Weltek's XL-Serles 32 and 64 bit floating point processors, delivering 20 MFLOPS peak performance, the environment transparently integrates the C programming environment with a parallel date-flow telemetry processing architecture. Supporting automatic human interface generation, symbolic high-level debugging and a complete floating point math library the System 500 programming environment extends to parallel execution transparently. It handles process scheduling, memory management and data conversion automatically. Configured to run under UNIX, the system's development environment is powerful and portable. The platform can be migrated to PC's and other hosts, facilitating eventual integration with an array of standard off-the-shelf tools.