SBD Situational Awareness Messaging for Low-Bandwidth Position Updates
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Solution Overview
Problem
The Short Burst Data (SBD) satellite system has limited bandwidth, making it inefficient for transmitting situational awareness data, which requires frequent and accurate location updates, and existing compression methods like Winzip increase data size, exacerbating the issue.
Innovation Solution
A message handler that receives and transmits positional information over SBD, employing data compression techniques such as reducing longitude and latitude to 22 bits, altitude to 8 bits, and dividing heading into fractions to minimize data size, while prioritizing the most recent position information and sending it in combined packets to maximize efficiency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If data compression utilities like Winzip are used to transmit situational awareness data over SBD, then data transmission completeness is improved, but data size increases and bandwidth efficiency deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the parameter representation format by encoding longitude and latitude as 22-bit values, altitude as 8-bit values, and heading as discrete fractional values. This parameter transformation reduces the data size from what would be required by standard compression utilities while maintaining complete transmission of situational awareness information.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts only the essential positional information parameters (longitude, latitude, altitude, heading) needed for situational awareness and transmits them in a custom optimized format, rather than transmitting complete data sets that would require compression utilities. This extraction approach eliminates the need for Winzip while maintaining data completeness.
2Measurement precision
If frequent position updates are transmitted to maintain situational awareness accuracy, then measurement precision is improved, but bandwidth consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transforms continuous positional parameters into discrete encoded formats (22-bit coordinates, 8-bit altitude, fractional heading), which reduces the data volume per update. This allows frequent position updates to be transmitted within the limited SBD bandwidth while maintaining the required positioning accuracy for situational awareness.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements periodic position updates at optimized intervals, transmitting encoded positional data only when necessary to maintain situational awareness. This periodic transmission strategy maintains measurement precision while controlling bandwidth consumption within the constraints of the low-bandwidth satellite communication system.
3Loss of information
If complete positional information is transmitted for all assets, then situational awareness completeness is improved, but data transmission time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent encodes complete positional information (longitude, latitude, altitude, heading) into compact binary formats with fixed bit lengths. This parameter transformation allows all essential positional data for multiple assets to be transmitted in a single optimized packet structure, achieving complete situational awareness without extending transmission time.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent combines multiple positional parameters for multiple assets into a single integrated data packet with a unified structure. This merging approach transmits complete situational awareness information for all tracked assets simultaneously, reducing the number of separate transmissions required and minimizing total data transmission time.
Data Source
AI summary
A message handler for receiving and transmitting positional information over a short burst data (SBD) service is provided. The message handler comprises a receiver for receiving packets with positional information from one or more mobile devices over the SBD service, a memory for storing the positional information, a transmitter for sending situational awareness packets to the one or more mobile devices, computer readable medium having computer readable instructions stored thereon for causing the message handler to receive the packets from the one or more mobile devices, store the positional information from the packets in the memory, select positional information based on parameters for the situational awareness packets, the selected positional information comprising at least longitude and latitude, heading and altitude for at least one mobile device, compress and combine the selected information to send in the situational awareness packets based on rules and send the situational awareness packets to the one or more mobile devices.