It must be monotonic and should be in integral values. Building telemetry indices for multiple missions is quite feasible. The initial effort focused on a table-driven, descriptive specification. This suggests that an algorithmic specification file may be necessary. To describe the telemetry format we have developed the following nomenclature.
Parcels reflect the logical structure of the telemetry.
Atoms are created by assembling and extracting information contained in parcels called segments. Atoms consist of one or more segments. Quality information is associated with individual segments. An atom is assembled from good quality segments. On the last segment, the pins are checked to ensure that they have all been knocked down and that no data dropouts occurred.