Telemetry Systems
TSI/TelSys Inc., Columbia, Maryland, the American subsidiary
of TSI/TelSys Corporation, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada,
is a spinoff company formed expressly to commercialize NASA high-data-rate
telemetry technology and products originally developed at Goddard
Space Flight Center's Microelectronic Systems Branch. The company
exemplifies two different technology transfer routes: the growing
process of "privatizing" certain types of government
operations, and the personnel technology transfer medium, whereby
NASA employees leave the agency to join private industry and
use their NASA acquired technological expertise to develop products
for the commercial market.
A spinoff company formed to commercialize NASA high-data-rate
telemetry technology, TSI/TelSys manufactures a high speed processing
system for commercial communications applications.
TelSys develops and manufactures ground station communications
equipment that performs both traditional telemetry processing
and the bridging/switching functions required to interconnect
local/wide area networks with space-ground communications networks.
The company continues to support government sponsored space
programs, such as those operated by NASA, the Department of Defense
and the European Space Agency. In addition, however, TelSys is
moving more and more into commercial communications spheres.
The remote sensing industry is experiencing substantial activity
growth and TelSys is manufacturing systems that provide affordable,
timely access to space-acquired data in both scientific and commercial
remote sensing programs. Although the company's products and
technology were developed for satellite telemetry applications,
the existing network interfaces and the inherent ability of the
equipment to process high-rate streams of multimedia (voice,
imagery, text) data enable effective interconnection of broadband
networks using commercial communications satellites.
The sequence of events that led to the formation of TelSys
began in 1985, when NASA tasked James Chesney, then a 16-year
veteran of the agency, with developing technology to support
the next generation of ground telemetry systems. The challenge
was to develop systems capable of meeting NASA's increasingly
sophisticated requirements by processing data at rates up to
300 million bits per second, and to develop maximal commonality,
reusability and the interoperability among all new systems deployed
by NASA.
A unique high performance chip, developed by the TelSys group
when it was a NASA unit, is produced in units of 24.
In 1994, James Chesney retired from NASA and founded TSI/TelSys
Inc. In 1995, he was joined by other former members of the Goddard
Microelectronic Systems Branch and by a number of key hires from
industry.
Today, TSI/TelSys Inc. designs, manufacturers, markets and
supports a broad range of commercial satellite telecommunications
gateway products evolved from technologies that originated in
the Microelectronics Systems Branch. These technologies and products
support two-way, high-speed space data communications for telemetry,
satellite remote sensing, and high-data- rate communications
applications.
The satellite antenna is part of the system
used for high-speed data transmissions.
The specially-designed chip is incorporated into TelSys
product boards to filter unwanted information from data
transmitted by satellites to Earth.
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