NARRATOR

When Emma Nutt arrived at Edwin Holmes Telephone Despatch Company in Boston on Sept. 1, 1878, she became the first female telephone operator. Hours later, her sister Stella followed in her footsteps.

Until then, teenaged boys worked the switchboards, large banks of metallic ports that connected users through the earliest telephone networks. These switchboards advanced the telephone from a direct link between two users to a network of interconnected subscribers who connect to each other through a central hub.

But, sources report that the boys hired to run the earliest switchboards were notoriously rude and occasionally profane. Immature operators took to practical jokes and wrestling matches on the job.

Given the less-than-desirable working conditions and minimal pay, their attitude was understandable.

Alexander Graham Bell, one of the inventors of the telephone, thought that replacing these boys with young women might provide the telephone with a better façade. At the time, women were thought to be inherently polite. Emma Nutt proved the perfect model of this standard.

Nutt became the archetypal switchboard operator. She was well-spoken, kind, patient… The standard she set for the operators that followed in her footsteps created a perception of the job as glamorous work for cultured young women.

In the switchboard’s earliest days, the late 1800s, operators served a limited number of customers within their own communities. These female operators acted as an early search engine, providing callers with the information they needed to go about their day. They formed intimate relationships with their local communities, providing callers with information like the weather, the news and even local gossip.

As the number of telephone users grew, so did the switchboards. The expanding network required large numbers of dexterous employees trained in switchboard techniques to function. By the early 1900s, there were so many calls that the women could hardly take their eyes off the boards even for a second. The job required them to work in claustrophobic rooms, sitting erect for long hours on hard, straight-backed chairs.

The number of telephones in the United States and around the world would continue to grow. If nothing had changed, I doubt even the most capable switchboard operators could handle the task of maintaining the network.

Fortunately, automation solved this problem. Nowadays, switchboard operators are largely a thing of the past. The telephone networks of today, taking advantage of computer technologies, operate autonomously, for the most part…

And now, NASA is working on ways to automate its own networks.

I’m Danny Baird. This is “The Invisible Network.”

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The electromagnetic spectrum, the range of frequencies over which NASA sends its data through space, is a finite resource when we think of it in terms of communications. In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, allocates portions of the electromagnetic spectrum used for commercial communications to various users. For example, the FCC allocates pieces of the spectrum to cell service, satellite radio, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi…

For the federal government, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration regulates the pieces of the spectrum used by governmental agencies, including NASA.

So, imagine the spectrum divided into a limited number of lines on a telephone switchboard.

NASA only has access to a few of these lines, a limited portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The agency dedicates employees to scheduling their use, endeavoring to allot them as efficiently as possible. They schedule connections weeks, sometimes months, in advance, ensuring missions can get their data through these invisible lines down to the ground.

I’m making it sound simple. It isn’t. It’s anything but.

Say a spacecraft studies solar activity. Its data collection needs may change with the sudden eruption of a solar flare or a spike in solar activity, requiring more of the network than previously allotted to it. If the spacecraft has limited room on board for data and doesn’t have a connection scheduled, that data could be lost. Even if it has enough storage, the mission might not have a connection scheduled in the immediate future, failing to provide earthbound scientists studying the Sun with timely data.

How does NASA respond to this unforeseen rise in communications demand?

Communications scheduling can be a challenging job. As the number of missions grow and their data needs increase, NASA’s metaphorical electromagnetic switchboard can become cluttered with users seeking to downlink their data or uplink commands. Unforeseen spikes in communications need can require schedulers to change things on the fly, a stressful, complicated process that can lead to dropping previously scheduled links. NASA schedules are responsive to mission needs, but there aren’t always enough NASA-allocated lines available to support every mission that requires a downlink.

What happens then? How can a spacecraft downlink data when all the lines are busy?

NASA looks to cognitive radio, the infusion of artificial intelligence into space communications networks, to meet demand and increase efficiency.

JANETTE BRIONES

Modern space communications systems use complex software to support science and exploration missions. By applying artificial intelligence and machine learning, satellites control these systems seamlessly, making real-time decisions without awaiting instruction.

NARRATOR

Janette Briones serves as principle investigator for the cognitive communications project at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Cognitive radios use artificial intelligence to automatically employ underutilized portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. These “white spaces” are currently unused, but already allotted, segments of the spectrum. The FCC permits a cognitive radio to use the unused frequency until its primary user becomes active again.

In terms of our metaphorical switchboard, a cognitive radio opens up lines allocated to other users that would otherwise be wasted. A cognitive radio can use many different lines, no matter where they lie on the switchboard. When a device, in this case: a spacecraft, stops using its line, cognitive radio exploits that lapse in use until the primary user needs it again. A cognitive radio switches from one white space to another, harnessing unemployed lines on the electromagnetic switchboard.

Essentially, with cognitive radio, NASA’s switchboard gets bigger and more efficient.

JANETTE BRIONES

The recent development of cognitive technologies is a new thrust in the architecture of communications systems. We envision these technologies will make our communications networks more efficient and resilient for missions exploring the depths of space. By integrating artificial intelligence and cognitive radios into our networks, we will increase the efficiency, autonomy and reliability of space communications systems.

NARRATOR

The space environment presents a number of other challenges that cognitive radio could mitigate. Space weather, electromagnetic radiation emitted by the Sun and other celestial bodies, fills space with noise that can interrupt communications.

Alex Young, NASA heliophysicist, can explain it better.

ALEX YOUNG

Space weather is the study of how the Sun interacts with everything in the solar system. And, of course, we are very, very interested in how that interaction occurs here on Earth. The Sun releases huge amounts of its atmosphere, its magnetic field and radiation which impacts us in a lot of different ways.

Communications is really a very important part of this because solar activity disrupts high-frequency radio communications. This has impacts on airplanes, ships because these use these frequencies to transmit their location. This is also important for astronauts on the space station because they rely on this for backup communication.

But, you know, in addition, we don’t just have the impact for the communication radio frequencies, but the actual satellites, which are used for this communication, are impacted by high-energy radiation, high-energy particles coming from these eruptions on the Sun.

These high-energy particles are something that we’re very well protected from here on Earth because of the Earth’s magnetic field and our thick atmosphere. But, when a satellite is outside the atmosphere, farther up in the magnetic field, it is not so well protected. These technologies are directly impacted by this radiation.

This is even a concern for humans, themselves, in space.

So, it’s really critical that we understand all of this solar phenomena, to understand how to predict it, much like we do hurricanes here on Earth, but also to understand the impact that it has on our technological society.

NARRATOR

NASA’s Glenn Research Center experiments with cognitive radios capable of identifying and adapting to space weather. These radios would transmit outside the range of interference or even cancel distortions caused by radiation using artificial intelligence.

In the future, a NASA cognitive radio’s adaptive software could even learn to shut itself down temporarily to lessen radiation damage during severe space weather events, increasing science and exploration data returns.

Additionally, the cognitive radio’s artificial intelligence could also allocate ground station downlinks just hours in advance, as opposed to weeks, leading to more efficient scheduling, and fewer scheduling changes. In fact, a futuristic network of cognitive radios could also suggest alternate data paths to the ground. These processes could prioritize and route data through multiple lines simultaneously to avoid interference with scheduled downlinks.

Cognitive radio may also make communications network operations more efficient by decreasing the need for human intervention. An intelligent radio could adapt to changing electromagnetic conditions and predict common operational settings for different environments, automating time-consuming processes previously handled by NASA employees.

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How does NASA test these innovations?

The Space Communications and Navigation Testbed, or SCaN Testbed, aboard the International Space Station provides engineers and researchers with tools to test cognitive radio in the space environment. The testbed houses three software-defined radios in addition to a variety of antennas and apparatuses that can be configured from the ground or other spacecraft.

While NASA can simulate space environments on the ground, there’s a certain level of unpredictability that comes with actually being in space. The SCaN Testbed allows engineers to test communications technologies in actual conditions, rather than simulated ones. There, NASA can make sure that advanced systems like cognitive radios possess the resilience required for spaceflight.

There are many NASA engineers adapting cognitive radio techniques to space. As with most terrestrial technologies, cognitive techniques can be more challenging to implement in space due to the position of spacecraft in their orbits, the electromagnetic environment and the need to interact with legacy instruments aboard spacecraft launched before cognitive techniques were developed. In spite of these challenges, integrating machine learning into existing space communications infrastructure will increase the efficiency, autonomy and reliability of communications systems.

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Cognitive radio is part of a larger effort by NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program to automate our networks using a variety of techniques and new technologies.

Disruption tolerant networking, or DTN, will allow the network to store data at points along the route to end-user, even if circumstances interrupt a leg of the journey. Protocols allow the data to rest at DTN nodes on board other spacecraft until the path forward is unobstructed.

Think of the Postal service. Along a letter’s route from sender to recipient, the letter makes numerous stops. At each stop, the Postal Service stores the letter until it can proceed onto the next leg of the journey. DTN operates similarly.

Currently, the International Space Station has DTN capabilities. In fact, NASA, in a 2017 demonstration, sent a selfie from Antarctica to the station, stopping at numerous DTN nodes along the way. The upcoming Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission, which will provide unprecedented insight into Earth’s ocean and atmosphere, will also incorporate DTN technologies.

Overall, innovations like these, from cognitive radio to DTN, will increase data returns and provide missions with timely, vital mission data propelling NASA and the communications industry as a whole into the future.

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Emma Nutt, the first female switchboard operator, made $10 a month, about $240 in today’s money when adjusted for inflation. She worked 54 hours a week. Despite the perceived glamour of the job, work as a switchboard operator was grueling, menial labor. In a New York Times op-ed, published anonymously in 1922, a female switchboard operator estimated she said “number please” about 120 times per hour, eight hours a day. She reported derision by customers for every connectivity issue that arose, no matter whether or not they were in her control.

I’m sure many customer service call center operators can relate.

Automated switching equipment would gradually eliminate the need for telephone switchboard operators. No longer would women perform these menial tasks for a pittance. However, their roles in the telecommunications industry would open the workplace to the possibility that women could succeed in more technical roles. Many consider the hiring of female switchboard operators a first step on the road to women integrating more fully into the skilled workforce.

One could argue that these women made possible the work of Janette Briones, cognitive radio expert whose efforts might one day reduce the work needed from NASA’s own switchboard operators.

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Today, automation can be a scary word, one that evokes obsolescence or joblessness. However, in both of these cases technology that seeks to eliminate labor can offer new opportunities for growth.

Switchboard operators opened the door for women to move into other technical areas, infusing the workplace with innovations developed by women — women who would otherwise have been excluded from the workforce. In space communications, innovations like cognitive radio could free today’s communications schedulers to pursue new, forward-thinking work at NASA.

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The Invisible Network is a NASA podcast presented by theSpace Communications and Navigation program office. This episode was written by me, Danny Baird, and released on Oct. 16, 2018. Editorial oversight provided by Ashley Hume. Our public affairs officers are Clare Skelly and Peter Jacobs. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and share us with a friend. For the full text of this episode, a list of sources and related images visit nasa.gov/SCaN.