Interoperability: voice and audio standards for Space missions

摘要

Voice communication and audio data exchange are essential services for supporting space mission operations. They are especially important in a cooperative international environment in human space flight programs like the International Space Station (ISS). Between humans, one of the most common information exchanges is voice communication. In human space flight, the primary function of voice communication is to support the mission executed by astronauts, cosmonauts, taikonauts, and other space travelers. The international voice and audio industries have many standards and interfaces for acquiring, recording, and distributing live and recorded audio. That flexibility can lead to complexity when attempting to share or monitor voice or audio from acquisition to monitoring or recording locations. Voice communications was once the realm of analog technology; now voice is encoded and exchanged in digital form. The digital voice systems have advantages but also disadvantages. Voice and audio communications in space missions serve to the international supporting ground teams as well as the astronauts. The astronauts live and work in space facilities developed and launched by different countries. The ground supporting teams belong to different space agencies and private companies as well. For mission safety and success, interoperability of voice communications is crucial. The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) decided that was necessary to have a document to define the standard for communications between control centers in different parts of the world, between spacecrafts, spacecraft and the control centers, between cosmonauts, taikonauts and astronauts wearing different space suites to the spacecraft and to the control centers. This paper describes the setup of voice communication in a space mission context, points out special requirements and operational approaches, and defines the transmission, coding, interface, and quality parameters needed for space mission support. It provides system designers with a subset of the larger industry set of standards from which to choose, depending on the application and purpose of the voice system.