Noncoherent Telemetry Demodulator

Data throughput requirements for supporting airborne telemetry test and training missions have significantly increased while spectral allocation has decreased. This situation strongly motivates a migration towards more spectrally-efficient modulations techniques such as the ARTM Tier I and Tier II waveforms, which offer two to three times the spectral efficiency of legacy PCM/FM at roughly the same error rate performance. In order to achieve this level of performance, available demodulators use coherent detection methods which have been shown to synchronize slower and be more sensitive to channel impairments as compared to the legacy non-coherently detected PCM/FM. The objective of this effort is to investigate processing architectures and detection algorithms for both waveforms that significantly improve the resynchronization speed and robustness over existing coherent demodulation products. The goal is to recover more and better quality telemetry data by minimizing the duration and frequency of resynchronization events. During phase 1, a literature search followed by supporting analysis and simulation will be performed to select and characterize candidate approaches. A design suitable for hardware implementation in a 1U 19 inch rack-mount unit will be presented. In phase 2, a prototype demodulator will be constructed and tested to validate the phase 1 analysis.