3/07/94:  ACTS STATUS 

This ACTS status update was prepared by NASA's Lewis Research Center. It is
made available to friends of the ACTS Program to keep them advised of progress.

Since the last update, the primary focus of efforts has transitioned from ACTS
System checkout to conduct of experiments.  Following is a summary of
experiments that have been completed or are currently ongoing as of March 3,
1994.

BBP

Army Topographic Engineering Center - Investigating the use of satellite
communications for transmission of corrections to Global Positioning System
(GPS) users in real time.  Updates will be sent to both static and moving
locations.

COMSAT World Systems/INTELSAT - Comparing ACTS service and quality to INTELSAT
for potential use of ACTS technologies in future INTELSAT systems.

Huntington Bank/Ohio University - Comparing ACTS service to current terrestrial
and satellite telecommunications services in support of financial data
processing across the bank's network of branch offices.  ACTS provides wide
bandwidth communications over a small earth station.

MITRE Corporation- Testing and characterizing ISDN (Integrated Services Digital
Network) operations over a Ka-band, all-digital satellite link.

Motorola - Government Systems and Technology Group - Performing an engineering
analysis of some of the ACTS-specific communication protocol (TDMA) parameters.

National Communications System - Investigating usage of ACTS to support
national emergency communications needs.

NASA Johnson Space Center/KRUG Life Sciences - Remotely diagnosing
ophthalmological pathology between Houston, Texas and Boulder, Colorado.
Patient at one end is examined and diagnosed by team of physicians at other
end.  Provided hands-on training of JSC flight physicians in simulation of a
shuttle diagnosis.

NASA Lewis Research Center - Demonstrations: Supported several demonstrations
of ACTS to the public; includes the National ISDN Users' Forum, Denver,
Colorado; AIAA, San Diego, California; Army management; and visitors at NASA
Lewis.

NASA Lewis Research Center - Technology Verification: The ACTS Project Office
is performing several experiments to characterize and verify the unique
technologies on ACTS such as its Multibeam Antenna, Ka-band Frequency, Baseband
Processor, and 800 MHz- bandwidth Microwave Switch Matrix.

US Army Space Command - Supporting a variety of applications defined by the
Army as part of their charter to investigate the use of commercial and non-DoD
satellite services as an adjunct to military communication systems.  Part of
the experiment provides field communications during military training
exercises.

MSM

EMSAT: Advanced Technology for Emergency Medical Services - Using the ACTS
Mobile Terminal (special transmit/receive terminal mounted in a van) to support
emergency mobile medical services such as forwarding patient information while
still in an ambulance to the receiving hospital.  Current operations have been
in Pasadena, California; future operations are planned for Seattle, Washington
and Hawaii.

Florida Atlantic University- Characterizing the wide bandwidth potential of
ACTS with the intent to broadcast High Definition Television (HDTV) signals
over the satellite.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory- Operators of the ACTS Mobile Terminal. Various
engineering-type experiments have been performed to characterize the terminal's
performance.  Eleven various organizations have expressed interest in using
this terminal for a variety of mobile communication application experiments.

NASA Lewis Research Center- Characterizing the ACTS wide bandwidth
communications channel especially in the presence of controlled interfering
signals.

PROPAGATION

Class I - Seven experiments are using identical NASA-provided receive only
terminals that monitor the ACTS beacons (one at the uplink frequency, one at
the downlink frequency) and also collect basic weather information.  The sites
are spread geographically across the United States (and a site in Canada) which
represent various rain climatic zones.  The goal of the experiments is to
collect data over the two-year ACTS mission and develop propagation statistics
characterizing Ka-band communications.

University of British Columbia
Colorado State University
University of Alaska, Fairbanks
COMSAT Laboratories
Stanford Telecommunications, Inc./New Mexico State University
University of Oklahoma
University of South Florida/Florida Atlantic University

Teleglobe Canada - Using a separately designed receive-only terminal, they are
also collecting rain-fade statistics by monitoring the ACTS beacon signals.

Class II - These experiments use the communications channels on ACTS to perform
propagation experiments

Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory/University of Texas,
Austin - Using a mobile propagation terminal mounted in a van that is used to
characterize Ka-band's suitability in a mobile environment; special emphasis on
low elevation angle communications.
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  Via FTL BBS (404-292-8761) and NASA Spacelink (205-895-0028)
