Engineering topics

Deshpande, Manohar

Publications and source records attributed to Deshpande, Manohar.

14 records

NASA NTRS2017

Design VHF Antennas for Space Borne Receivers for SmallSats

Space borne microwave remote sensors at VHF/UHF frequencies are important instruments to observe reflective properties of land surfaces through thick and heavy forestation on a global scale. One of the most cost effective ways of measuring land reflectivity at VHF/UHF frequencies is to use signals transmitted by existing communication satellites (operating at VHF/UHF band) as a signal of opportunity (SoOp) signal and passive receivers integrated with airborne/space borne platforms operating in the Low Earth Orbit (LEO). One of the critical components of the passive receiver is two antennas (one to receive only direct signal and other to receive only reflected signal) which need to have ideally high (>30dB) isolation. However, because of small size of host platforms and broad beam width of dipole antennas, achieving adequate isolation between two channels is a challenging problem and need to be solved for successful implementation of space borne SoOp technology for remote sensing. In this presentation a novel enabling VHF antenna technology for Cubesat platforms is presented to receive direct as well as reflected signal with needed isolation. The novel scheme also allows enhancing the gain of individual channels by factor of 2 without use of reflecting ground plane.

Antennas↗

NASA NTRS2017

Development of a Coherent Bistatic Vegetation Model for Signal of Opportunity Applications at VHF UHF-Bands

A coherent bistatic vegetation scattering model, based on a Monte Carlo simulation, is being developed to simulate polarimetric bi-static reflectometry at VHF/UHF-bands (240-270 MHz). The model is aimed to assess the value of geostationary satellite signals of opportunity to enable estimation of the Earth's biomass and root-zone soil moisture. An expression for bistatic scattering from a vegetation canopy is derived for the practical case of a ground-based/low altitude platforms with passive receivers overlooking vegetation. Using analytical wave theory in conjunction with distorted Born approximation (DBA), the transmit and receive antennas effects (i.e., polarization, orientation, height, etc.) are explicitly accounted for. Both the coherency nature of the model (joint phase and amplitude information) and the explicit account of system parameters (antenna, altitude, polarization, etc) enable one to perform various beamforming techniques to evaluate realistic deployment configurations. In this paper, several test scenarios will be presented and the results will be evaluated for feasibility for future biomass and root-zone soil moisture application using geostationary communication satellite signals of opportunity at low frequencies.

UFH↗

NASA NTRS2016

Advanced Antenna Design for NASA's EcoSAR Instrument

Advanced antenna arrays were designed for NASA's EcoSAR airborne radar instrument. EcoSAR is a beamforming synthetic aperture radar instrument designed to make polarimetric and "single pass" interferometric measurements of Earth surface parameters. EcoSAR's operational requirements of a 435MHz center frequency with up to 200MHz bandwidth, dual polarization, high cross-polarization isolation (> 30 dB), +/- 45deg beam scan range and antenna form-factor constraints imposed stringent requirements on the antenna design. The EcoSAR project successfully developed, characterized, and tested two array antennas in an anechoic chamber. EcoSAR's first airborne campaign conducted in the spring of 2014 generated rich data sets of scientific and engineering value, demonstrating the successful operation of the antennas.

phased array↗

NASA NTRS2016

Digital Beamforming Synthetic Aperture Radar Developments at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Advanced Digital Beamforming (DBF) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology is an area of research and development pursued at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Advanced SAR architectures enhances radar performance and opens a new set of capabilities in radar remote sensing. DBSAR-2 and EcoSAR are two state-of-the-art radar systems recently developed and tested. These new instruments employ multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) architectures characterized by multi-mode operation, software defined waveform generation, digital beamforming, and configurable radar parameters. The instruments have been developed to support several disciplines in Earth and Planetary sciences. This paper describes the radars advanced features and report on the latest SAR processing and calibration efforts.

Wide band↗

NASA NTRS2016

Status of the Signals of Opportunity Airborne Demonstrator (SoOp-AD)

Root zone soil moisture (RZSM) is not directly measured by any current satellite instrument, despite its importance as a key link between surface hydrology and deeper processes. Presently, model assimilation of surface measurements or indirect estimates using other methods must be used to estimate this value. Signals of Opportunity (SoOp) methods, exploiting reflected P- and S-band communication satellite signals, have many of the benefits of both active and passive microwave remote sensing. Reutilization of active transmitters, with forward-scattering geometry, presents a strong reflected signal even at orbital altitudes. Microwave radiometry is advantageous as it measures emissivity, which is directly related to dielectric constant and sensitive to water content of soil. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is used in P-band (400 MHz) for soil moisture and biomass, but faces issues in obtaining permission to transmit due to spectrum regulations, particularly over North America and Europe. A primary advantage of SAR is excellent spatial resolution. Signals-of-opportunity (SoOp) reflectometry provides a good compromise between radiometry and SAR by providing decent sensitivity and special resolution for RZSM measurements without issues of spectrum access. Further, a SoOp instrument would not be limited to operating in only a few protected frequencies and is also expected to have less susceptibility to radio-frequency interference (RFI). Although advantageous if available, SoOp techniques do not require the ability to demodulate or decode the communication signals. The SoOp instrument is receive only and therefore requires much less electrical power than a SAR and is more similar to a radiometer in receiver architecture. These unique features of SoOp circumvent past obstacles to a spaceborne P-band remote sensing mission and have the potential to enable new RZSM measurements that are not possible with present technology. We will present the latest development status of a SoOp reflectometer airborne demonstrator (SoOp-AD) operating at 250 MHz to take advantage of existing communication satellite. The instrument is currently in laboratory integration and test.

Reflectometers↗

NASA NTRS2015

Design and Development of VHF Antennas for Space Borne Signal of Opportunity Receivers for Cubesat Platforms

Design and Development of VHF Antennas for Space Borne Signal of Opportunity Receivers for Cubesat Platforms. Space borne microwave remote sensors at VHF/UHF frequencies are important instruments to observe reflective properties of land surfaces through thick and heavy forestation on a global scale. One of the most cost effective ways of measuring land reflectivity at VHF/UHF frequencies is to use signals transmitted by existing communication satellites (operating at VHF/UHF band) as a signal of opportunity (SoOp) signal and passive receivers integrated with airborne/space borne platforms operating in the Low Earth Orbit (LEO). One of the critical components of the passive receiver is two antennas (one to receive only direct signal and other to receive only reflected signal) which need to have ideally high (>30dB) isolation. However, because of small size of host platforms and broad beam width of dipole antennas, achieving adequate isolation between two channels is a challenging problem and need to be solved for successful implementation of space borne SoOp technology for remote sensing. In this presentation a novel enabling VHF antenna technology for Cubesat platforms is presented to receive direct as well as reflected signal with needed isolation. The novel scheme also allows enhancing the gain of individual channels by factor of 2 without use of reflecting ground plane

Crossed Dipole Antennas↗

NASA NTRS2014

Radiometric Calibration Techniques for Signal-of-Opportunity Reflectometers

Bi-static reflection measurements utilizing global navigation satellite service (GNSS) or other signals of opportunity (SoOp) can be used to sense ocean and terrestrial surface properties. End-to-end calibration of GNSS-R has been performed using well-characterized reflection surface (e.g., water), direct path antenna, and receiver gain characterization. We propose an augmented approach using on-board receiver electronics for radiometric calibration of SoOp reflectometers utilizing direct and reflected signal receiving antennas. The method calibrates receiver and correlator gains and offsets utilizing a reference switch and common noise source. On-board electronic calibration sources, such as reference switches, noise diodes and loop-back circuits, have shown great utility in stabilizing total power and correlation microwave radiometer and scatterometer receiver electronics in L-band spaceborne instruments. Application to SoOp instruments is likely to bring several benefits. For example, application to provide short and long time scale calibration stability of the direct path channel, especially in low signal-to-noise ratio configurations, is directly analogous to the microwave radiometer problem. The direct path channel is analogous to the loopback path in a scatterometer to provide a reference of the transmitted power, although the receiver is independent from the reflected path channel. Thus, a common noise source can be used to measure the gain ratio of the two paths. Using these techniques long-term (days to weeks) calibration stability of spaceborne L-band scatterometer and radiometer has been achieved better than 0.1. Similar long-term stability would likely be needed for a spaceborne reflectometer mission to measure terrestrial properties such as soil moisture.

calibrating↗

NASA NTRS2012

Expandable and reconfigurable instrument node arrays

An expandable and reconfigurable instrument node includes a feature detection means and a data processing portion in communication with the feature detection means, the data processing portion configured and disposed to process feature information. The instrument node further includes a phase locked loop (PLL) oscillator in communication with the data processing portion, the PLL oscillator configured and disposed to provide PLL information to the processing portion. The instrument node further includes a single tone transceiver and a pulse transceiver in communication with the PLL oscillator, the single tone transceiver configured and disposed to transmit or receive a single tone for phase correction of the PLL oscillator and the pulse transceiver configured and disposed to transmit and receive signals for phase correction of the PLL oscillator. The instrument node further includes a global positioning (GPA) receiver in communication with the processing portion, the GPS receiver configured and disposed to establish a global position of the instrument node.

Hilliard, Lawrence M.↗

NASA NTRS2012

Iterative Nonlinear Tikhonov Algorithm with Constraints for Electromagnetic Tomography

Low frequency electromagnetic tomography such as the capacitance tomography (ECT) has been proposed for monitoring and mass-gauging of gas-liquid two-phase system under microgravity condition in NASA's future long-term space missions. Due to the ill-posed inverse problem of ECT, images reconstructed using conventional linear algorithms often suffer from limitations such as low resolution and blurred edges. Hence, new efficient high resolution nonlinear imaging algorithms are needed for accurate two-phase imaging. The proposed Iterative Nonlinear Tikhonov Regularized Algorithm with Constraints (INTAC) is based on an efficient finite element method (FEM) forward model of quasi-static electromagnetic problem. It iteratively minimizes the discrepancy between FEM simulated and actual measured capacitances by adjusting the reconstructed image using the Tikhonov regularized method. More importantly, it enforces the known permittivity of two phases to the unknown pixels which exceed the reasonable range of permittivity in each iteration. This strategy does not only stabilize the converging process, but also produces sharper images. Simulations show that resolution improvement of over 2 times can be achieved by INTAC with respect to conventional approaches. Strategies to further improve spatial imaging resolution are suggested, as well as techniques to accelerate nonlinear forward model and thus increase the temporal resolution.

Xu, Feng↗

NASA NTRS2011

Electromagnetic Scattering Analysis of Large Size Asteroids/Comets for Reflection/Transmission Tomography (RTT)

A precise knowledge of the interior structure of asteroids, comets, and Near Earth Objects (NEO) is important to assess the consequences of their impacts with the Earth and develop efficient mitigation strategies. Knowledge of their interior structure also provides opportunities for extraction of raw materials for future space activities. Low frequency radio sounding is often proposed for investigating interior structures of asteroids and NEOs. For designing and optimizing radio sounding instrument it is advantageous to have an accurate and efficient numerical simulation model of radio reflection and transmission through large size bodies of asteroid shapes. In this presentation we will present electromagnetic (EM) scattering analysis of electrically large size asteroids using (1) a weak form formulation and (2) also a more accurate hybrid finite element method/method of moments (FEM/MOM) to help estimate their internal structures. Assuming the internal structure with known electrical properties of a sample asteroid, we first develop its forward EM scattering model. From the knowledge of EM scattering as a function of frequency and look angle we will then present the inverse scattering procedure to extract its interior structure image. Validity of the inverse scattering procedure will be presented through few simulation examples.

Deshpande, Manohar↗

NASA NTRS2011

Modeling Electromagnetic Scattering From Complex Inhomogeneous Objects

This software innovation is designed to develop a mathematical formulation to estimate the electromagnetic scattering characteristics of complex, inhomogeneous objects using the finite-element-method (FEM) and method-of-moments (MoM) concepts, as well as to develop a FORTRAN code called FEMOM3DS (Finite Element Method and Method of Moments for 3-Dimensional Scattering), which will implement the steps that are described in the mathematical formulation. Very complex objects can be easily modeled, and the operator of the code is not required to know the details of electromagnetic theory to study electromagnetic scattering.

Deshpande, Manohar↗

NASA NTRS2011

Wavelet Filter Banks for Super-Resolution SAR Imaging

This paper discusses Innovative wavelet-based filter banks designed to enhance the analysis of super resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images using parametric spectral methods and signal classification algorithms, SAR finds applications In many of NASA's earth science fields such as deformation, ecosystem structure, and dynamics of Ice, snow and cold land processes, and surface water and ocean topography. Traditionally, standard methods such as Fast-Fourier Transform (FFT) and Inverse Fast-Fourier Transform (IFFT) have been used to extract Images from SAR radar data, Due to non-parametric features of these methods and their resolution limitations and observation time dependence, use of spectral estimation and signal pre- and post-processing techniques based on wavelets to process SAR radar data has been proposed. Multi-resolution wavelet transforms and advanced spectral estimation techniques have proven to offer efficient solutions to this problem.

Sheybani, Ehsan O.↗

NASA NTRS2006

Multi-Wavelength Dielectrometer (MWD) Sensor For Planetary Subsurface Exploration

NASA's mission to Moon, Mars, and Beyond envisions landing of a light weight measurement platform on the planetary surface. The Multi-Wavelength Dielectrometer (MWD) on-board consists of essential electronics and metallic plates acting as electrodes attached to the body of such platform. An electric signal applied to one of the electrodes acting as a cathode sets up electric field pattern (in the soil medium) between the cathode and other electrodes acting as anodes. The electrodes are swept through multiple wavelengths (1Hz-1MHz) and the electric current drawn by the electrodes is measured at each frequency. The measured current whose amplitude and phase depend upon electrode spacing, dielectric constant of the subsurface soil, and the frequency is then used to estimate electrical properties of the soil. In this paper the MWD sensor that will measure the dielectric properties of Moon/Mars s soil is presented. A procedure to process the MWD measured data for extracting the soil properties is also described. Assuming the subsurface soil structure as multilayer strata having varying electric properties, an electric equivalent circuit of the multiple electrodes configuration placed on a multi-layer soil sample is obtained. The current drawn by the equivalent circuit from the low frequency signal generator is then calculated. By minimizing the difference between the model s estimated current and measured MWD data the electric properties of soil samples are extracted. Experimental and simulated results will be presented to validate the proposed procedure for extracting soil properties.

Deshpande, Manohar↗

NASA NTRS2005

Characterization of Meta-Materials Using Computational Electromagnetic Methods

An efficient and powerful computational method is presented to synthesize a meta-material to specified electromagnetic properties. Using the periodicity of meta-materials, the Finite Element Methodology (FEM) is developed to estimate the reflection and transmission through the meta-material structure for a normal plane wave incidence. For efficient computations of the reflection and transmission over a wide band frequency range through a meta-material a Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) approach is also developed. Using the Nicholson-Ross method and the Genetic Algorithms, a robust procedure to extract electromagnetic properties of meta-material from the knowledge of its reflection and transmission coefficients is described. Few numerical examples are also presented to validate the present approach.

Deshpande, Manohar↗