An efficient algorithm for variable rate demodulation

In spacecraft, hardware resources and energy are limited, which restricts the hardware consumption of the variable rate demodulation in Telemetry and Telecommand (TT & C) systems. This paper proposes an algorithm which accomplishes variable rate demodulation based on pseudo high datarate demodulation and repeated decoding without reducing the sampling rate. It turns out that the performance of the method is equivalent to the ideal result of variable rate demodulation, and the hardware consumption is less than half of that of the classical Direct Digital Converter (DDC) chips. Computer simulations and practical experiments show that the proposed method is effective for variable rate demodulation in TT & C systems.