[Cesg-all] Results of CESG Polls closing 3 September 2014

Thu Sep 4 21:18:28 UTC 2014

CESG E-Poll Identifier: CESG-P-2014-08-002 
Approval to publish CCSDS 401.0-B-24, Radio 
Frequency and Modulation SystemsPart 1: Earth 
Stations and Spacecraft (Blue Book, Issue 24)
Results of CESG poll beginning 20 August 2014 and ending 3 September 2014:

                  Abstain:  0 (0%)
  Approve Unconditionally:  5 (100%) (Shames, Peccia, Barkley, Moury, Scott)
  Approve with Conditions:  0 (0%)
  Disapprove with Comment:  0 (0%)

Total Respondents: 5
No response was received from the following Area(s):

SOIS

SECRETARIAT INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS:  Approved Unconditionally
PROPOSED SECRETARIAT ACTION:            Generate CMC poll

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CESG E-Poll Identifier: CESG-P-2014-08-003 
Approval to publish CCSDS 551.1-O-1, Correlated 
Data Generation (Orange Book, Issue 1)
Results of CESG poll beginning 20 August 2014 and ending 3 September 2014:

                  Abstain:  2 (40%) (Barkley, Calzolari)
  Approve Unconditionally:  1 (20%) (Peccia)
  Approve with Conditions:  1 (20%) (Scott)
  Disapprove with Comment:  1 (20%) (Shames)

CONDITIONS/COMMENTS:

Peter Shames (Disapprove with Comment): It is 
unfortunately the case that I must reject this 
document. The reasons are stated below along with 
what is hopefully enough explanatory material and 
examples to allow the document to be revised so that it is acceptable.

The response is "reject" rather than "approve 
with conditions" because the issues are too 
extensive to state as a resolvable set of RIDs.

The CCSDS Procedures Manual (CCSDS A02.1-Y-4) 
provides for the publication of Orange Book 
experimental specifications. The expectation is 
that these will have Blue Book content, "the 
equivalent technical status of a Draft 
Recommended Standard without being actually on the Normative Track".

Furthermore, it is expected that the 
specification will have normative content such 
that "prior to publication at least one hardware 
or software prototype (or other implementation) 
must exist that demonstrates and exercises all of 
the options and features of the specification in 
an operationally relevant environment". This 
implies that the specification, as with a Blue 
Book, is sufficiently complete, clear, precise, 
and unambiguous such that it can be directly 
implemented by an independent party to create an interoperable component.

This specification, in its current form, does not meet these tests.

The following specific issues are noted:

- The document, as it stands, does not include 
sufficient technical details describing the 
method; it appears to mostly be examples and 
description, suitable for a Green Book. The 
technical details of the algorithms are 
apparently in separate Russian patents, but this 
is not acceptable within a CCSDS document. The 
technical details must be present in the document 
itself in a form where they can be directly implemented.

- The document references specific Russian 
papers, standards and designs (BRS-4, Russian 
system -4 (onboard radio system)) and mostly 
includes references to Russian documents. These 
are not accessible to an English speaking 
audience and the connection to the bulk of the 
CCSDS body of work seem tenuous at best even 
though there are a number of CCSDS standards that 
relate to the general subject matter of coding and error correction.

Lastly, the document does not adhere to CCSDS 
publication standards for terse style. In many 
instances the descriptions are quite complicated 
and often somewhat convoluted. This makes the 
document quite hard to read and therefore hard to 
successfully interpret. The services of a 
qualified technical writer who is both fluent in 
English and has an understanding of the subject 
matter may be required in order to resolve this problem.

It is recommended that the developers of this 
draft experimental standard look at two related 
CCSDS documents for guidance. For guidance on 
appropriate content and style for a Blue Book 
formatted document the "TM Synchronization and 
Channel Coding" Blue Book, CCSDS 131.0-B-2, would 
be a good reference. See especially Sec 6 or 7 
each of which involves references to patented technology.

If this is to remain as a Green Book in nature 
then the "TM Synchronization and Channel 
Coding--Summary of Concept and Rationale ", Green 
Book, CCSDS 130.1-G-2, would be a good reference.

Keith Scott (Approve with Conditions): The 
attached document contains the SIS RIDs. I would 
like to see the interoperability issues more 
clearly stated in the document, splitting out 
what is needed for interoperability (e.g. using 
multiple agencies' ground stations to do the 
diversity reception) from the actual combining, 
which I think only has to occur at the mission MOC.

Total Respondents: 5
No response was received from the following Area(s):

SOIS

SECRETARIAT INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS:  Disapproved
PROPOSED SECRETARIAT ACTION:            Generate 
new CESG poll after conditions have been addressed

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CESG E-Poll Identifier: CESG-P-2014-08-004 
Approval to publish CCSDS 131.5-O-1, Erasure 
Correcting Codes for Use in Near-Earth and 
Deep-Space Communications (Orange Book, Issue 1)
Results of CESG poll beginning 20 August 2014 and ending 3 September 2014:

                  Abstain:  0 (0%)
  Approve Unconditionally:  3 (50%) (Peccia, Calzolari, Moury)
  Approve with Conditions:  3 (50%) (Shames, Barkley, Scott)
  Disapprove with Comment:  0 (0%)

CONDITIONS/COMMENTS:

Peter Shames (Approve with Conditions): This is 
just a proposed Orange Book, and I am not a 
coding expert by any means, but this document 
raises concerns. We have, over the last few 
years, had a number of discussions of erasure 
codes, but there never was a WG formed to address 
this. I am aware of at least two competing 
erasure coding approaches for handling outages in 
high rate channels. The two that come to mind are 
the "Digital Fountain" or "Raptor" erasure codes 
(such as in IETF RFC 5053) or using MDS with a 
channel interleaver 
(http://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-174/174B.pdf). 
Both of these have been discussed, I believe, 
within this working group (see attached).

While it is clear that significant work has gone 
into documenting this code it is troubling that 
there is no mention of these other erasure code 
approaches nor any comparison with their 
performance. Since these codes were discussed 
with the WG I would expect to see them compared, 
their performance evaluated, and a technical 
discussion provided as to why this one that has been documented is superior.

The stated data outages for optical comm (and Ka 
band) channels are 1-10 ms. At the very high data 
rates that these are capable of (100 Mbps to more 
than 1 Gbps), a 10 ms outage amounts to a loss of 
as much as 10**7 bits. As a result I am also 
concerned about the ability of these relatively 
short block codes to be able to deal with these 
sorts of data outages that I believe either 
Raptor or the MDS / channel interleaver approaches can handle.

I therefore request that the WG address these 
issues prior to publishing this specification.

Erik Barkley (Approve with Conditions): The 
secretariat is requested to fix the legends in 
figures E-3, E-4, and E-5. They appear to be 
using an extended character coding such that they 
are no longer rendered as English text. (It is 
likely the same legend from Figure E-2 can be used).

Keith Scott (Approve with Conditions): RIDs in 
attached .zip file. The excel spreadsheet is just 
the data used to generate the RIDs.

Total Respondents: 6
No response was received from the following Area(s):

SOIS

SECRETARIAT INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS:  Approved with Conditions
PROPOSED SECRETARIAT ACTION:            Generate 
CMC poll after conditions have been addressed

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CESG E-Poll Identifier: CESG-P-2014-08-005 
Approval to release CCSDS 901.1-R-1, Space 
Communications Cross SupportArchitecture 
Requirements Document (Red Book, Issue 1) for CCSDS Agency review
Results of CESG poll beginning 20 August 2014 and ending 3 September 2014:

                  Abstain:  0 (0%)
  Approve Unconditionally:  5 (100%) (Shames, 
Peccia, Barkley, Calzolari, Scott)
  Approve with Conditions:  0 (0%)
  Disapprove with Comment:  0 (0%)

CONDITIONS/COMMENTS:

Keith Scott (Approve Unconditionally): The 
attached file contains a set of SIS Area RIDs 
against the document. Through prior arrangement 
with the SEA area director and in conjunction 
with the CSS Area director, it is SIS's position 
that these RIDS do not have to be resolved before 
putting the document out for Agency Review (which 
is why I have voted to Approve Unconditionally). 
The understanding is that the SIS rids will be 
considered and adjudicated along with any Agency 
RIDs, and that SIS will have the opportunity to 
review the changes and participate in the poll to 
publish once all items have been addressed.

Total Respondents: 5
No response was received from the following Area(s):

SOIS

SECRETARIAT INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS:  Approved Unconditionally
PROPOSED SECRETARIAT ACTION:            Generate CMC poll

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