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Completed TRL 4 (started at 3, targeting 4)
This IRAD will develop a high rate (300 Mbps+) telemetry test system using the 4400 to 4940 MHz Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry band. The system will be used to evaluate link performance on high dynamic, suborbital applications such as sounding rockets. To date, maximum sounding rocket downlink rates have been limited to less than 50 Mbps using commercially available transmitters and range telemetry receivers. Significantly higher rate downlinks are needed to support the higher data volume generated by sounding rocket science instruments. The results from this IRAD will help identify and configure flight and ground systems that could be utilized on a rocket flight to evaluate impacts of vehicle dynamics and high roll rates on the link performance.
The development of the High rate telemetry system in the C-band RF frequency allocation will allow for a much greater bandwidth (>300MHz). These game changing data rates that have not been achievable before using existing sounding rocket technologies. With these high data rates, high bandwidth data such as high definition video or other high bandwidth data transfers will be possible.
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