Peter Parker aka Spiderman, once
said, "With great power comes
great responsibility". While we
don't have Parker's résumé, he
may have temporarily worked as a
telemetry technician before
opting for a relatively relaxed
profession of freelance
photography. To understand the
responsibilities of a telemetry
technician, one needs to
understand telemetry first.
Telemetry or "remote
measurement" is a highly
automated communications process
by which measurements are made
and other data collected at
remote, inaccessible or
dangerous places, such as
orbiting satellites, and then
relayed to receiving stations on
ground for display, monitoring,
and recording.
The telemetry technician has a
wide variety of career
opportunities which may include
monitoring of large, complex
systems such as chemical plants,
oilrigs, satellites, electric
power plants, gathering
meteorological data, remote
meter reading, logistics
management, tracking endangered
land and marine species, real
time physiological monitoring of
patients, and monitoring manned
and unmanned space flights. If
you are a telemetry technician
charged with the maintenance of
a telemetry service of any type,
it is suggested that before your
accept the contract, you or the
owner of the equipment take
possession of a service manual
for that particular system.
Essential information required
for any effective servicing work
includes the following:
- Assigned carrier frequency for
the system
- Type of modulation, bandwidth
(deviation), and maximum data
rate
- Level and frequency of all
pilot tones and sub-carriers
- Significance of each frequency
in the modulation bandwidth
- Expected signals at input and
output test points for each
sub-section
- Sense of logic, baud rate of
data and error correction scheme
If the source of the data is a
remote station, which forms an
integral unit with the radio
equipment, you will also need
information on the type and
location of the sensor supplying
the original information and
details of any preliminary data
processing that may be done
before the input to the radio
link. The telemetry technician
in command of this great
technology should monitor it
conscientiously. For instance,
for many environmental
monitoring duties, such as
stream gauging or automatic
weather stations, the
measurement values are unlikely
to change significantly for many
hours at a time. In such cases,
it would be grossly uneconomical
in terms of both electrical
power and use of spectrum space
to run the telemetry transmitter
continuously.
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