USED SCIENCE HARDWARE:

Equipment and facilities for conduct of the experiment contain the following:

• Ham packet radio system including:
  • transceiver of USW;
  • antenna-feeder device (4 pieces);
  • power supply unit (2 pieces);
  • control computer RSC 2.
• dedicated software monitoring generation of probing pulses in onboard transceiver in radio beacon mode;
• ground receiving network of ham radio packet communication to record probing pulses of onboard radio beacon;
• Center for Scientific Data Acquisition and Processing (SDA&PC) based upon official Internet-server (TsNIIMASH) for control of receiving network, as well as data acquisition from its measurement points.

PURPOSE:

• Study of USH-radio signal transmit/receive conditions in the mode of onboard radio beacon in the ISS RS using world-wide ham radio network.
• Determining characteristics of radio Signals retransmitted through onboard transceiver, their quality and spatial distribution.
• Assessment of disturbing actions, such as re-reflection, shading caused by structural elements and value of the ISS elevation angle.

OBJECTIVES:

• Generation of onboard radio beacon probing pulses as time marks to ground receiving network (including ham radio receivers of USW) and transmission of the measurement results throughout Internet network.
• Check of the concept of forced radio silence in the mode of short-packet generation by radio communication Protocol AX25.
• Determining of ISS structural members effect on onboard antenna directional pattern (DP) in flight conditions.
• Determining zones of DP radio shadowing zones by the station structural members depending upon its spatial orientation.
• Assessment of ground receiving network non-uniform sensitivity on accuracy in spatial-time measurements.
• Determining of ground receiving network radio visible configurations depending upon an angle of elevation and light-shadow situation along the flight course.

EXPERIMENT RESULTS:

Files containing data on the recorded radio signals (time, place, frequency-phase characteristics) transmitted through Internet from each ground-based receiver within measurement USW network at the address of the Center for Scientific Data Acquisition and Processing.