Vox Spectrum successfully creates a radio audit trail for the Indian Space Research Organisation

The Customer

ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organisation, was formed in 1969, with the mandate to develop satellite launch capabilities to serve India’s needs. With spectacular success, ISRO built the ability to launch any kind of satellite into any orbit, and has put India in the select club of six countries with satellite launch capability.

Being a technology-driven organisation, ISRO is very selective about its solution providers. Vox Spectrum was honoured to be invited to address a specific challenge that ISRO faced.

The Challenge

ISRO has a very aggressive launch schedule, with several launches every year. Each launch involves the perfect co-ordination of activities of many teams, each working under pressure.

These teams communicate largely through radio, as their activities are spread throughout ISRO’s dispersed launch site at Sriharikota, near the city of Chennai in South India.

The challenge was that there was no audit trail for post-launch analysis. Vital commands would be given on radio, but ISRO did not have the ability to log them and replay them on demand to trace the pattern of events that led to a particular end.

  ISRO’s internal systems were coordinated using a   time signal generated by a specially designed   system. Using a 1KHz tone, this signal encoded the   current time to an accuracy of 1 millisecond. ISRO’s   design engineers decided that they need a voice log   of all radio conversations, encoded along with the   time signal, which they could play back in a time-   synchronised pattern. Their dedicated time display   device would decode the signal when necessary. Vox   Spectrum was invited to provide a solution to   address this need.

  The Solution

  Vox Spectrum engineers analysed the customer   requirements and devised a cost-effective solution   that met all ISRO’s needs. Vox provided an 16   channel analogue system that was patched into the   radio frequencies that ISRO needed to monitor. One   of these channels was dedicated to recording the   input from the time device.

  When a record was played, the audio file was played   back in synchronisation with the encoded time signal,   though separate audio output devices. The time   signal output went to a dedicated decoder, which   displayed the time on a LED display device, while the   audio signal went to standard speakers or   headphones.

  The solution was deployed in April 2003, and has   been working to ISRO’s utmost satisfaction ever   since. ISRO has since placed repeat orders for   similar systems for their other launch facilities.