Rotary Head Recorders in Telemetry Systems

Abstract

Although magnetic recording devices employing rotary head technology have been around for many years, specific products were not developed with the bit error performance to satisfy the instrumentation recorder needs of the telemetry community. Only recently have a number of new products and new product development programs materialized which offer positive indications that telemetry systems will soon benefit from the higher data rates and storage capacities. The lack of standards in development of rotary head technology has led to development of a variety of design approaches by various manufacturers and system designers. If this trend continues, the telemetry community will not enjoy the media compatibility which has contributed so much to the success of the IRIG instrumentation recorder. The ability to remove a tape recorded on one vendors recorder and replay the tape on a different ground station containing a second vendors recorder is a capability that should be retained with the advent of the new machines. Two standards have evolved defining tape characteristics and the format of information on tape for instrumentation rotary head recorders. For the instrumentation tape media to be truly transportable between telemetry ground stations, standard signal and data formal interfaces must also be developed.