Industry Day at ITC

The RF Vendors Working Group (RFVWG) in coordination with the Range Commanders Council (RCC), Telemetry Group (TG), RF Systems Committee (RFSC), will sponsor a 2nd Industry Day for the purpose of performing assessments of Data Quality Metric (DQM) and Data Quality Encapsulation (DQE) on PCM data / clock output stream from Telemetry Receivers from various receiver vendors.

DQM/DQE is defined in Appendix 2-G of the IRIG-106 chapter 2 published by the RCC. The latest release is from July 2023 and is available here 106 Telemetry Standards – Public RCC – TRMC Website (Confluence) (osd.mil). The DQM/DQE format provides an estimate of data quality and passes along that information to Best Source Selectors (BSS) and other devices requiring this information.

This 2nd Industry Day builds upon the initial Industry Day held at ITC 2022, both with the same objective, testing the accuracies of DQM value derived by receivers for a given input signal type by comparing DQM (BEP) values versus BER. The objective for Industry Day ITC 2024 will be to gather a more comprehensive data set for each receiver through the use of standardized test methods.

The testing will follow the test methods from the IRIG 118-Vol 2 Chapter 11, “Test Procedures for Assessing Telemetry Receiver Data Quality Metrics” (118 Vol-2 Test Methods for TM Radio Frequency Subsystems – Public RCC – TRMC Website (Confluence) (osd.mil)). All six (6) test scenarios listed below will be used:

11.1 – BER vs BEP with Additive Noise
11.2 – DQM (BEP) Step and Dwell Response
11.3 – BER vs BEP with Adjacent Channel Interference
11.4 – BER vs BEP for Static 3-Ray Multipath Channel Conditions
11.5 – BER vs BEP for Static 2-Ray Multipath Channel Conditions
11.6 – DQM (BEP) Resynchronization Response

The RFVWG has defined 8 signal types to be representative of real-world cases encountered at DoD Test Ranges. (PCM-FM, SOQPSK, ARTM CPM, STC waveforms; with or without LDPC forward error correction; bit rates ranging from 5 to 20Mbps; DQE payload block sizes from 1024 to 16384 bits).

A test run consists of a test signal fed to all participating vendor receivers while the automated test goes sequentially through the 6 individual test methods. Results will be automatically collected for each test in the form of resulting DQM and BER for each receiver. During a test run, real-time monitoring of DQM and/or BER will be available. Quantitative results in the form of a DQM/BER correlation plot and DQM response time (only for dynamic tests 11.2 and 11.6) will be produced and shared between vendors and the RCC TG RFSC.

The event is open to all receiver vendors, Government personnel, Government Support Contractors, and associated commercial organizations and all are invited to participate in Industry Day ITC 2024. The RFSC wholeheartedly supports this cooperative testing to further develop and refine Chapter 11 of IRIG 118 Vol. 2.

The Industry Day Event will be held:

Date: Friday Oct. 25th, 2024  (Friday of the International Telemetry Conference ITC week)

Location : Meeting room Cascade B at Renaissance Hotel Glendale, Az.

Time:  Setup : 7:30 am / Testing Start:  8:30 am / Anticipated completion: 12:00pm

If you are interested in participating in this RF Industry Day ITC 2024, please respond to the contacts below:

Points of Contact.

RCC TG RF Systems Committee
Maxim Apalboym
Email:   Maxim.apalboym.civ@us.navy.mil
Phone:  (760) 608-6363

RF Vendors Working Group
Pierre Bastie
Email: pierre.bastie@semco.com
Phone:  (770) 596-8896