Existing Facilities shared through Tracking Station Gateway

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(No Transcript)
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Existing Facilities shared through Tracking
Station Gateway Control Center Gateway

• Maurizio Togni, Tiziano Compagno (Telespazio)
• Voice 39 0863 550436 Fax [phone]
• E-mail maurizio_togni_at_telespazio.it,
  tiziano_compagno_at_telespazio.it

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Index

• Background about TTC services
• Sharing TTC Facilities !!
• Why we used a Gateway?
• Why we should use a Gateway?
• NCC as Control Center Gateway
• STC as Tracking Station Gateway
• Gained Experiences
• Analysis of Customer needs and production Phases
• STC General Description
• NCC General Description
• STC Data Flow management
• Questions Comments.

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Background about TTC service
While the lack of standardised interfaces between
ground system elements was the main impediment
(or better was cause of complexity) in trying to
share the services of already existing Tracking
Station with other Control Centre. Now also
within the Ground segment, new Standards and
recommendation (SLE) defines a standard way of
interfacing between the Control Centre and the
Ground station. This is is a very new concept
that for sure will drive the design of new
systems but what about the the already existing
one?
On the Space Link, already consolidated Standards
and recommendations, adopted by many space
missions, have driven the design of Telemetry
Command Ranging ground equipment. Most of them
are COTS equipment strongly configurable that
could be compliant with a lot of satellite.This
capability allows the reuse of existing Ground
Station for supporting different kind of
missions.
Satellite Charlie
Space Link
Ground Station dedicated to S/C Charlie
Proprietary Protocol TM/TC/RNG etc.
Charlie Ground Segment
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Sharing TTC Facilities !!
Satellite Delta
Satellite Charlie
Delta Control Centre
Proprietary Protocol TM/TC/RNG etc.
Space Link
Ground Station Compliant with S/C Charlie
Delta
Protocol Conversion and Interface Adaptation
Proprietary Protocol TM/TC/RNG etc.
Charlie Ground Segment
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Sharing TTC Facilities !!
Satellite Delta
Satellite Charlie
Delta Control Centre
Protocol Conversion and Interface Adaptation
Proprietary Protocol TM/TC/RNG etc.
Space Link
Ground Station Compliant with S/C Charlie
Delta
Proprietary Protocol TM/TC/RNG etc.
Charlie Ground Segment
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Sharing TTC Facilities !!

• The Idea of sharing TTC facilities arises with
  the need to reduce the technical, management and
  operational costs or from the other point of view
  to increase the productivity of an existing
  station.
• Telespazio is a provider and user of TTC
  services depending on the activities involved.
  Our systems are designed in order to have strong
  flexibility from the interface and configuration
  point of view.
• Even if we are continuing to implement new
  solutions our goal is to reuse as much as
  possible the already existing facilities taking
  benefit from the costs reduction.
• Anyway we agree that any kind of harmonization in
  interface, protocol and management methodology
  will provide benefits to the future projects and
  to all the agencies and operators.

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Why we used a Gateway?
At the Control Centre any kind of interface
modification is really complex mainly because of
the routine operation shall continue in any case,
but also the amount of regression test that
should be executed after the software upgrade is
an aspect to be considered.
Delta Control Centre
Protocol Conversion and Interface Adaptation
At the station the interface modification
probably will affect several subsystems.
Modification of the TCR equipment could be
difficult because of lack of source code, or due
to the age is no more visible to touch them or
just because they are COTS.
Ground Station Compliant with S/C Charlie
Delta
Protocol Conversion and Interface Adaptation
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Why we should use a Gateway?

• An other advantage of using a Gateway at the
  Tracking Station or at the Control Centre could
  be in case of necessity to renew the existing
  equipment
• i.e maintaining the Operation Control Centre
  and changing the old TCR processor because not
  maintainable with a new one

OBSOLETE
OBSOLETE
OBSOLETE

• At the station buying COTS is cheaper than
  procuring a customized equipment and also the
  customization in most of the cases is more
  expensive than the equipment itself.
• Manufacturer usually doesnt like to do this job
  mainly because of a single implementation doesnt
  compensate the study.

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NCC as Control Center Gateway

• Presently and in the past, as TTC User,
  Telespazio made strong usage of external Station
  providers, tuning our methodology and developing
  tools (Network Control Center and Data Router)
  able to interface in the simplest way, depending
  on the situation, our Control Center with TT/C
  stations owned by other entities (compliant on
  the Space Link).

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STC as Tracking Station Gateway

• Moreover also as TTC Provider Telespazio
  deployed Facilities, developed Tools (STation
  Computer) and Procedures in order to satisfy a
  wide range of customer requirements, been
  compliant with their ICD, and complementing
  functionality's not available in our TTC station
  (also them compliant on the Space Link).

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Gained Experiences

• The experiences gain at system level and at
  programming level, in conjunction with the
  product that come out from the internal
  implementations, give the idea to propose STC
  and/or NCC to third part satellite operator.

• Both applications are available for Linux and
  Solaris Operating System with similar
  functionality.

• The transportation protocol used by both tools
  is TCP while the networking is IP.

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Gained Experiences

• Which services are required by the selected
  mission
• Online TLM
• Offline TLM
• Online TLC
• Ranging
• Doppler
• Statistics
• OCF (CLCW)
• Etc.

• Services

• Functionalities

- Data Format

• Way of Ops.

Manual by the Operator or in Automatic controlled
by MCS.
The data format of Input and Output messages as
Header data field

• Which functions are required by the selected
  mission
• telemetry filtering according to Virtual channel
  
• storage or not of telemetry for offline data
  transfer
• make conversion of fields (i.e.Time Tag, Data
  Quality)
• Etc.

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Analysis of Customer needs and production phases

• Station Computer
• A company which operates a Tracking
  Station/Network could be a potential customer
  interested on the Station Computer before to
  commit, Telespazio will start a feasibility
  analysis based on specific documentation provided
  by the customer. The minimum set of documentation
  required, typically includes

• Once that the feasibility is verified, the
  following activities will take place
• - Requirements definition, Eventual software
  adaptation, Definition of Mission Profile, System
  Configuration and Sub System test.

• Once integrated at the station , the STC will
  pass through standard cycle of integration test
  and End to end test in order to accomplish the
  validation phase.

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Analysis of Customer needs and production phases

• Network Control Centre
• A company which operates a Control Centre could
  be a potential customer interested on the Network
  Control Centre.
• Also in this case the first activity foreseen for
  Telespazio will be to start a feasibility
  analysis based on specific documentation provided
  by the customer and also in this case the minimum
  set of required documentation, typically
  includes

• Once that the feasibility is verified, the rest
  of activities will be more or less the same as
  already explained for the Station Computer.

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STC General description

• The STation Computer here in after STC is a
  software tool to be used as Tracking Station
  Gateway in order to provide existing facilities
  with strong flexibility and configuration
  capability necessary to adapt the protocols and
  the functionality's toward different kind of
  Operational Control Centre.

• The Station Computer plays a central role
  guaranteeing and managing the interfaces with
  respect to TCR Base Band and MCS. An important
  subsystem inside the STC is the one dealing with
  Ext. protocol adaptation.

• Usage of the Station Computer tool, will allow
  the service provider to be compliant with a wide
  range of users (OCCs) just working around a
  single piece of software.

• STC can have two operating positions in a
  prime/alternate configuration for management of
  interfaces with the TCR Base Band and the OCCs.

PROTs ADAP.
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STC General description
Station Computer

Station Computer with profile AGILE
ONLINE TLM Service
OFF LINE TLM Service

• STC could be operated by the operators through
  the GUI interface (local or remote) or
  automatically by a Monitor Control System.

• By the GUI, the Operator will have visibility on
  the process status and in case malfunction occurs
  clear
• and intelligible alarms are provided.

Telecommand Service
RNG/ DPL Service
OCF (CLCW) Service
STAT. REP Service

• Editing configuration files (programmer
  activities are necessary just in case of very
  different adaptation) it will be possible to
  define dedicated Mission Profiles for what
  concern all the services available.

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STC General description

• For the STC the following main functionality's
  are envisaged

TTC STATION
CONTROL CENTRE
STC
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NCC General description

• The Network Control Center, here in after NCC is
  also a software tool to be used as Control Center
  Gateway in order to allow an existing Operation
  Control Center to use a wide range of providers.

• NCC mainly assigns resources, provides protocol
  adaptation and acts as Data Router between
  external providers and OCC for transfer of file
  format.

• Also using NCC at Operational Control Center will
  allow the service User to be compliant with a
  wide range of providers just working around a
  single piece of software.
• It plays a central role guaranteeing and
  managing the connection with respect to the
  Tracking Stations.

PROT. ADAP
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NCC General description

• Editing configuration files (programmer
  activities are necessary just in case of very
  different adaptation) it will be possible to
  define several dedicated Mission Profiles for
  what concern the following functionality
• NCC could be operated by the operators through
  the GUI interface (local or remote) or
  automatically by a Monitor Control System.

Network Control Center

ONLINE TLM Service
DATA ROUTER Service
Telecommand Service
RNG/ DPL Service
OCF (CLCW) Service
ADMIN. Msg Service
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STC data Flow management
TCR Processors will remain in charge of
Demodulation, Decoding, Bit and frame
synchronisation, interfacing at network level
with STC.
Usually all these interface will be configured on
the STC ones, according to the protocol used by
the TCR processors, but from the functionality
point of view they can be de-activated or
modified, defining the Mission Profile.
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STC data Flow management
This side of the interface is defined by the
Mission Profile that can be activated by the
operators or automatically by a Monitor Control
System before to start the service.
TM interface
TC interface
RNG interface
STation Computer
Profile CHARLIE
Profile Delta
Profile OSCAR
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STC data Flow management
TM interface
TC interface
RNG interface
STation Computer
TM interface
TC interface
RNG interface
TM interface
TC interface
RNG interface
The Telemetry Space link Data Unit is received by
the STC embedded as data field of a message
according to the TCR protocol. Usually it is a
CADU, with inside a TFDU or VCDU (a TLM frame).
Operation Control Centre
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STC data Flow management
The message received by the STC is converted as
specified by the configuration file and also the
Data Field itself can be manipulated if
necessary. Virtual Channel deco mutation is
supported and storage as well, if enable. If the
online storage is active, the Offline data
transfer service will be available in a file
format.
TM interface
TC interface
RNG interface
STation Computer
TM interface
TC interface
RNG interface
TM interface
TC interface
RNG interface
Operation Control Centre
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STC data Flow management
TM interface
TC interface
RNG interface
STation Computer
TM interface
TC interface
RNG interface
TM interface
TC interface
RNG interface
Operation Control Centre
As for Telemetry, the STC customise also all the
other messages and the Data Field as well as
specified by the loaded Profile
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Questions ?
Comments?