It goes without saying that the overall operational goal is accuracy. The output of the computer recognition program should exactly reproduce the hand-sent Morse code transmission. But by what measure should the accuracy of the program be evaluated? Should the program output be compared with that which a human would interpret as the transmitted message? Or should it “be based strictly on the quality of the received code, as compared to the standards for Morse code language? Both evaluation criteria merit consideration. Further discussion of this topic is presented in Chapter VI.
Three operational goals are specified for the computer recognition program. These are:
These goals are somewhat interrelated. If the recognition program cannot process the received Morse code in real-time, a memory storage unit is required to save the received signal until it can be processed, thus requiring additional core space. In this case, the size of the memory will determine the maximum length message that could be processed at any one time. The real-time constraint eliminates this problem.
The 4K memory limitation was chosen to permit implementation of the program within one basic unit of memory. Thus, the recognition program can be implemented on the basic PDP-12 or similar minicomputer.
Construction of a hardware realization of the recognition program is of particular interest at the Air Force Institute of Technology. Aside from obvious educational benefits, construction of a low cost, portable Morse code recognition machine has many military and civilian applications. Proper choice of computer instructions, along with compliance to the aforementioned goals, will result in a minimum number of components necessary to construct a hardware realization.