[Ground-station] Sounding Rockets and FPGAs - at a University

[Thomas Savarino]

I think that some meaningful work of integrating navigation and communication is possible here.  I got the idea from some email where someone said something about using the sounding rocket behavior for something. 

I had two ideas for experiments
1. Attach cheap accelerometers to crystal frequency sources and measure the frequency drifts during rapid accelerations. This measurement could provide an error signal somehow to correct the main clock frequency in a system.
2. It might be combined with something else, maybe a 3DOF Inertial measurement unit that would measure accelerations and maybe autocorrect Doppler shifts that occur during a flight. 
I suspect that these ideas are pretty old in some areas, like ballistic missiles, but getting it to work wouldn’t be that easy. 
I think that some meaningful work of integrating navigation and communication is possible here.  

So, there you go.

Best
S

Sent from my iPad

> On Apr 4, 2021, at 2:47 PM, Alex Wege via Ground-Station <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute> wrote:
> 
> 
> >>"Adapting to harsh and changing conditions quickly and reliably is a big systems challenge for us. Is a sounding rocket the right entry point to test this sort of work?"
> 
> I think this is an awesome idea! As a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota rocketry team I can tell you it's difficult to build a perfect telemetry system for a rocket -- especially supersonic ones.
> They might even appreciate just running some adaptive coding and FEC blocks like in DVB-S2 to improve link stability (assuming they ran into similar issues).
> That would also be an opportunity to test out (by proxy) the dynamics of our adaptive coding system in a stressful environment.
> 
> 
> On a less related note, I think our system would be perfectly suited for any high altitude ballooning teams to experiment with -- that would be really cool to see.
> 
> -KE0RYT
> 
>> On Sun, Apr 4, 2021 at 11:32 AM Jay Francis via Ground-Station <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute> wrote:
>> Michelle Thompson via Ground-Station wrote on 4/4/21 10:39 AM:
>> > If we were to propose an FPGA experiment on a sounding rocket (this is 
>> > with a University), what would be the best experiment?
>> It's probably easier to get FCC STA licenses for sounding rocket 
>> launches than orbital due to the limited duration.  I've done it a 
>> couple times now for S-Band telemetry on vehicles.  This could be a way 
>> to test very experimental modulation/protocols that might not be 
>> approved for orbital operation.
>> 
>> Flight testing deployment of very small hardware (similar to Ambasat 
>> size or smaller) may also be possible since there's no orbital debris 
>> tracking issues.  It could be interesting to have a sounding rocket 
>> deployment mechanism to test swarms of small networked "satellites".
>> 
>> Experiments flown on sounding rockets aren't necessarily only activated 
>> in space (unlike cubesats).  They can be designed to run through the 
>> whole flight.
>> 
>> The flight environment (acceleration, shock and vibe) of most sounding 
>> rockets is a bit harsher than an orbital launch - be prepared for that, 
>> or take advantage of it :-)
>> 
>> --Jay, KA1PQK
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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