Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Tech Transfer
Minimizing Implementation Loss in Soft-Decision GMSK Demodulators, Phase I
Project Introduction
Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) is a CCSDS standard scheme for space missions requiring very bandwidth efficient communications using transceivers with strict size, weight, and power restrictions. GMSK provides a constant envelope signal that passes unaltered through system nonlinearities, allowing efficient power amplifier operation without extensive filtering and predistortion. Unfortunately, current off-the-shelf GMSK and related continuous phase modulation (CPM) receivers (e.g., multi-h CPM) operate far from predicted theoretical performance and suffer from frequent link dropouts. CPM performance issues are mostly attributable to a failure to adequately model and mitigate against transmitter, channel, and receiver impairments, including fixed-point processing effects, and to generate reliable soft-decision information for decoding. To maximize performance given CCSDS turbo or LDPC coding and eliminate communications dropouts, a soft-decision generating GMSK demodulator with carefully designed impairment estimation and compensation is proposed.
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Anticipated Benefits
GMSK is employed in fielded commercial cellular systems such as GSM and military satellite communications systems such as A-EHF SATCOM. Multi-h CPM is used in UHF SATCOM and Tier 2 Advanced Range Telemetry (ARTM) systems. Robust and high performance CPM methods developed in this effort would offer greater capabilities and size, weight, and power reduction for each of these communications systems. Future space missions at near Earth, lunar, and deep space distances that require spectral efficient communications will benefit greatly from the robustness and size, weight, and power reduction offered by the proposed GMSK technology. Future small satellites and other miniature platforms would be able to use much more efficient power amplifiers with the given techniques, and high data rate applications such as high definition video could be more reliably supported in limited assigned frequency bands.
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Primary U.S. Work Locations and Key Partners
| Organizations Performing Work | Role | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| ORB Analytics, LLC | Lead Organization | Industry | Carlisle, Massachusetts |
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL)
|
Supporting Organization | NASA Center | Pasadena, California |
Primary U.S. Work Locations
-
California
-
Massachusetts
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Organizational Responsibility
Responsible Mission Directorate:
- Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD)
Lead Organization:
- ORB Analytics, LLC
Responsible Program:
- Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Tech Transfer
Project Management
Program Director:
Program Manager:
Principal Investigator:
Project Duration
Start: Jan 2010
End: Jul 2010
Technology Maturity (TRL)
| Start: | 2 |
| Current: | 3 |
| Estimated End: | 3 |
Applied Research
Development
Demo & Test
Technology Areas
Primary:
- TX05 Communications, Navigation, and Orbital Debris Tracking and Characterization Systems
- TX05.2 Radio Frequency
- TX05.2.1 Spectrum-Efficiency
Target Destination
Earth
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