an its 
  
Developmet of highspeed programmable 
formatter for earth observation satellite downlink 
data formatting 
Hideyo Yokotsuka* Toshibumi Sakata* Haruhisa Shimoda* 
Mineo Sekiguchi*** 
Shinichi Sobue** 
* Tokai University Research and Information Center 
** National Space Development Agency of Japan 
*** Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan 
Abstract: Formatting process of earth observation satellite downlink data is usually 
performed with custom made hardware which designed for one satellite or a sensor. In this 
paper we introduce a high speed programmable formatter system which is able to process 
many kinds of satellite downlink data without changing the hardware. 
KEY WORDS: programmable formatter,downlinkdata,software processing 
1. Introduction 
The various sensor data acquired with earth 
observation satellites are transmit to ground 
receiving stations. The sensor data and 
multiplexed with telemetry using special format 
called downlink format. 
The transfer rate of the down link data to 
ground receiving station exceeds to 
100Mbps,and the quantity of the downlink data 
per reception exceeds to several GB.Generally, 
this downlink data is processed through two 
step as follows.In the first step, the data is 
record in High Density Digital Tape(HDDT) in 
real time using High speed Digital Data 
Recorder (HDDR).In the second step, the 
downlink data is reproduced from HDDT, 
sensor data is extracted/divided into each scene 
207 
unit, and output to certain medium for 
computer peripheral equipment. Generally, 
“The format processing of downlink data” 
corresponds to the second step. In order to 
perform format processing a large quantity of 
down link data ,in high transfer to rate. most of 
the processing systems are consist of 
customized computer for certain sensor or 
satellite. 
However, in the near future lunch of various 
kinds of multi sensor satellite such as ADEOS 
are planned.If we make hardware for each 
sensor for format processing, it the system , and 
operation becomes very complicated. It also 
causes degradation of reliability of the format 
processing system. This is a very big problem. 
We have developed a programmable formatter 
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B1. Vienna 1996