Robust telemetry system for future launchers

This article presents a consideration of a new robust telemetry (TM) system for future launchers. The main target is to increase the maximum data rate of TM system to at least 5 Mbps with improvements such as more efficient physical layer, advanced antenna solutions, lossless data compression, satellite relays, and adaptive coding and modulation (ACM). An extension module for Network Simulator 3 (ns-3) for launch vehicle (LV) TM communications was developed, which is capable of evaluating the system performance and potential gains of the proposed enhancements. The results show that the proposed telemetry system can reach close to the target capacity with new physical layer modulation and coding scheme and the performance may be further improved with retro directive antenna array and satellite relays.