TELEMETRY, TRACKING &

CONTROL

Project Group Members

Nadeem Hussain
Asim Waheed

Telemetry, Tracking & Control

A communication system will be developed for the

elements to detect and correct changes.
The radio link will be examined for propagation
losses and numbers that describes the level of
noise that can affect a signal during transmission
using SNR.
The signals will be modulated by the radio on
carrier waves.

Communication System

Same communication
system for telemetry
& ground station.
Differences
in
hardware

AX25 Link Protocol

This protocol is used here to detect and correct errors.

Frame Format:
When a connection is established the data frames are
sent reverse and forward between the stations.

Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC)

Single bit errors

Two isolated single bit

errors, i.e. two 1's in E(x)
with zeroes between
All
an

instances of E(x) with

odd number of ones

Burst errors of up to 16
bits, i.e. E(x) contains 16
consecutive one's

The FCS field contains a

16-bit CRC checksum of
the data calculated.
This
checksum
is
calculated from both the
INFO field as well as the
non pay-load non flag

Retransmission and
Acknowledgement

The AX25 protocol specifies that an

acknowledge must be sent for each frame
containing data
It is possible to send multiple frames in one
window before receiving acknowledge from
the receiver

MX909 Modem

The MX909 modem and its driver software takes the AX25 frames
and breaks them up into smaller packets that are better suited for
transmission over a possible unreliable wireless link.
Extra overhead bytes are used for Forward Error Correction (FEC)
scheme, as well as checksumming and sender/receiver
synchronization.
Modem data is in the form of GMSK modulation.

Forward Error Correction

(FEC)

FEC can only detect and correct single bit error as in above
example

Frame Head

The Frame Head synchronizes the data b/w sender and receiver which
is achieved by sending two bytes of bit-synchronization followed by
two bytes of frame-synchronization.
The synchronization bytes are used for the modem circuits to detect
the signal and lock onto it. The two control bytes are used to transfer
the total number of bytes contained in the Data Blocks.
Last byte of Frame Head is an FEC byte with 4 bits for each of the
control bytes.

Data Blocks

The data to be sent is split up in to blocks of 18 bytes each.

These blocks are then transformed into Data Blocks by
adding 2 byte CRC checksum calculated from the 18 data
bytes. Then 4 bits of FEC are added for each byte including
the calculated CRC checksum. This brings the total Data
Block up to 30 bytes when sending 18 bytes of data.

Link Budget

Analyze the amount of errors induced in the

data stream by the communication channel at
the receiver end.
A link budget must be developed.
This budget must take into account the factors
that affect the received signal.

Link Budget (Continued)

Feedline Loss

Feedline losses occurs between the radio and the antenna.

For the ground station, the signal between the antenna and
the radio must pass through a signal splitter, then through
a polarization switch, through another signal splitter, and
lastly through a preamplifier.
Passing through the feed line, the signal will also pass
through a total of 18 meters of cable. For the ground
station feed line, this will yield a total loss of:

Antenna Gain

The antenna gain is a figure for the concentration of the radio waves in one
direction.
In this example a typical radiation pattern for a center fed dipole antenna is
shown. It can be seen that there is no radiation emanating from the ends of
the antenna whereas the strongest radiation is emanating perpendicular to
the antenna.
The gain factor of the satellite antenna is at a maximum when the satellite
is pointing its camera side and the antenna towards the Earth

Crossed Dipole Antenna

Crossed dipole antenna designed.

The dipoles are normally orientated
with respect to each other.
Circular polarization is achieved by
driving the two dipoles with a phase
difference of 90.
The top antenna in Figure 1 leads by
90, which means a right-hand-circular
polarization is expected (along the
positive z-axis).
The spacing between the dipoles is in
the order of /50.

Crossed Dipole Antenna

(Continued)

To increase the gain along the zaxis

a
linear
array
is
constructed,consisting
of
four
crossed-dipoles with a spacing of
/2.
Similarly aligned elements are
driven with equal phase (the
bottom antennas with a phase of
0 and the top antennas with 90).
Again
right
hand
circular
polarization is expected.

Losses in Signal Transmission

The power
transmitted from
the transceiver to
the antenna is
transformed into
an electromagnetic
wave and heat

Feedline loss is the

loss that occurs
between the radio
and the antenna
Polarization Loss lp
Propagation Loss L

Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)

It gives a figure for how clear a received signal

is.
GMSK modulation is used.
The problem arises because the transmitted
signal will never be the same as the received
signal. Loss through propagation and fading and
interference from noise of various origins, will
warp the original signal before it is received.

Conclusion

Frames
are
sent
from
transmitter to receiver and
each
frame
must
be
acknowledged or rejected.
Losses include propagation
losses,
antenna
gains,
transmitted power, thermal
noise at the receiver, and
disturbances through the
atmosphere. SNR should be
high to minimize losses.

The
MX909
modem protocol
adds
overhead
bytes in order to
implement a FEC
scheme for error
correction.