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At least 505 records · Page 28

Coherent Doppler Lidar for Measuring Altitude, Ground Velocity, and Air Velocity of Aircraft and Spaceborne Vehicles

A Doppler lidar sensor system includes a laser generator that produces a highly pure single frequency laser beam, and a frequency modulator that modulates the laser beam with a highly linear frequency waveform. A first portion of the frequency modulated laser beam is amplified, and parts thereof are transmitted through at least three separate transmit/receive lenses. A second portion of the laser beam is used as a local oscillator beam for optical heterodyne detection. Radiation from the parts of the laser beam transmitted via the transmit/receive lenses is received by the respective transmit/receive lenses that transmitted the respective part of the laser beam. The received reflected radiation is compared with the local oscillator beam to calculate the frequency difference there between to determine various navigational data.

Amzajerdian, Farzin↗

Wireless Sensor Node for Autonomous Monitoring and Alerts in Remote Environments

A method, apparatus, system, and computer program products provides personal alert and tracking capabilities using one or more nodes. Each node includes radio transceiver chips operating at different frequency ranges, a power amplifier, sensors, a display, and embedded software. The chips enable the node to operate as either a mobile sensor node or a relay base station node while providing a long distance relay link between nodes. The power amplifier enables a line-of-sight communication between the one or more nodes. The sensors provide a GPS signal, temperature, and accelerometer information (used to trigger an alert condition). The embedded software captures and processes the sensor information, provides a multi-hop packet routing protocol to relay the sensor information to and receive alert information from a command center, and to display the alert information on the display.

Monacos, Steve P.↗

Preliminary Investigation of the Satellite Gravitational Red Shift Experiment

The work performed under this contract involved study, design, and construction of experimental equipment to perform a short-term measurement of the gravitational red shift. In the system designed, phase comparison techniques are employed so that the time interval required to obtain a single measurement for one altitude is of the order of one minute. An elliptical orbit was chosen to permit measurement of frequency shift as a function of altitude. One particularly attractive orbit is that having a 12-hour orbiting period (perigee, 270 miles, apogee 24,800 miles). This orbit, shown in Fig. 1, allows continuous measurements to be made over an 11-hour interval during which time the altitude is varying greatly. Measurements can not be made for the succeeding 14 hours. Since the variation of frequency difference with altitude is of greatest interest, a fixed offset or a slow drift between the oscillator on the ground and. the oscillator in the satellite will not invalidate the measurements.

Zacharias, J. R.↗

Transverse eV Ion Heating by Random Electric Field Fluctuations in the Plasmasphere

Charged particle acceleration in the Earth inner magnetosphere is believed to be mainly due to the local resonant wave-particle interaction or particle transport processes. However, the Van Allen Probes have recently provided interesting evidence of a relatively slow transverse heating of eV ions at distances about 2-3 Earth radii during quiet times. Waves that are able to resonantly interact with such very cold ions are generally rare in this region of space, called the plasmasphere. Thus, non-resonant wave-particle interactions are expected to play an important role in the observed ion heating. We demonstrate that stochastic heating by random transverse electric field fluctuations of whistler (and possibly electromagnetic ion cyclotron) waves could explain this weak and slow transverse heating of H+ and O+ ions in the inner magnetosphere. The essential element of the proposed model of ion heating is the presence of trains of random whistler (hiss) wave packets, with significant amplitude modulations produced by strong wave damping, rapid wave growth, or a superposition of wave packets of different frequencies, phases, and amplitudes. Such characteristics correspond to measured characteristics of hiss waves in this region. Using test particle simulations with typical wave and plasma parameters, we demonstrate that the corresponding stochastic transverse ion heating reaches 0.07-0.2 eV/h for protons and 0.007-0.015 eV/h for O+ ions. This global temperature increase of the Maxwellian ion population from an initial Ti approx. 0.3 eV could potentially explain the observations.

Artemyev, A. V.↗

Systems and Methods for Ejection of Ions from an Ion Trap

The invention generally relates to systems and methods for ejection of ions from an ion trap. In certain embodiments, systems and methods of the invention sum two different frequency signals into a single summed signal that is applied to an ion trap. In other embodiments, an amplitude of a single frequency signal is modulated as the single frequency signal is being applied to the ion trap. In other embodiments, a first alternating current (AC) signal is applied to an ion trap that varies as a function of time, while a constant radio frequency (RF) signal is applied to the ion trap.

Cooks, Robert Graham↗

Experimental Study of Noise Shielding by a NACA 0012 Airfoil

The effects of sound source location, Mach number and angle of attack on the shielding of a laser-induced sound source by a NACA 0012 airfoil are examined. The sound source is a small plasma generated by a high energy, laser beam focused to a point. In-flow microphone measurements are acquired in the midspan plane of the airfoil over a broad range of streamwise stations, and shielding levels are calculated over different frequency ranges from the measurements acquired with and without the airfoil installed. Shielding levels are shown to increase as the source is positioned closer to the mid-chord of the airfoil, and to significantly decrease with increasing flow Mach number, except when the source is positioned near the leading edge of the airfoil. Both with and without flow, changes in angle of attack are associated with a corresponding shift of the shadow region. Finally, the effects of multipath signals, observer distance and signal scatter on the measured shielding levels are discussed.

Hutcheson, Florence V.↗

Robust Positioning in the Presence of Multipath and NLOS GNSS Signals

GNSS signals can be blocked and reflected by nearby objects, such as buildings, walls, and vehicles. They can also be reflected by the ground and by water. These effects are the dominant source of GNSS positioning errors in dense urban environments, though they can have an impact almost anywhere. Non- line-of-sight (NLOS) reception occurs when the direct path from the transmitter to the receiver is blocked and signals are received only via a reflected path. Multipath interference occurs, as the name suggests, when a signal is received via multiple paths. This can be via the direct path and one or more reflected paths, or it can be via multiple reflected paths. As their error characteristics are different, NLOS and multipath interference typically require different mitigation techniques, though some techniques are applicable to both. Antenna design and advanced receiver signal processing techniques can substantially reduce multipath errors. Unless an antenna array is used, NLOS reception has to be detected using the receiver's ranging and carrier-power-to-noise-density ratio (C/N0) measurements and mitigated within the positioning algorithm. Some NLOS mitigation techniques can also be used to combat severe multipath interference. Multipath interference, but not NLOS reception, can also be mitigated by comparing or combining code and carrier measurements, comparing ranging and C/N0 measurements from signals on different frequencies, and analyzing the time evolution of the ranging and C/N0 measurements.

McGraw, Gary A.↗

Dynamic Mode Decomposition of Unsteady Pressure-Sensitive Paint Measurements for the NASA Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel Tests

This paper describes the Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD) of the pressures on the scale model of the Space Launch System (SLS) Block 1 cargo vehicle with the Unsteady Pressure-Sensitive Paint (uPSP) measurements, which were collected in the Ascent Transient Aerodynamics Tests with the Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel 11-by-11-foot Transonic Wind Tunnel in September 2019 at NASA Ames Research Center. The work described in this paper is a part of NASA’s development of a new state-of-the-art uPSP capability in production wind tunnels. The conventional DMD algorithm is based on the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) of the data matrix. For the matrix of the uPSP measurements of the SLS ATAT, the number of rows is equal to the number of nodes in the grid of the scale model, and the number of columns is equal to the number of frames in the videos taken with 4 Phantom high-speed cameras. In this paper, it is verified that, for the time series with zero mean value, the DMD is equivalent to the decomposition with the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). Considering the uPSP is mainly used in the assessment of the unsteady, aerodynamic phenomena, the DMD of the uPSP measurements can be implemented in two steps: (1) subtract the mean value from the uPSP measurement on each of the grid nodes; (2) apply the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) on the resulting zero-mean time series. The DMD of the uPSP measurements with FFT has two advantages: (1) the computational complexity of FFT is O(N*logN), where N is the length of the time series; (2) compared to the SVD-based DMD algorithm, the DMD with FFT can be easily implemented in parallel processing. A sample matrix of uPSP measurements, at the size of 341 grid nodes and 128 frames, is generated. Figures 1 and 2 show the eigenvalues and the ratios of the eigenvectors, respectively, of the sample matrix, without and with the mean value removed on each of the grid nodes, computed with the SVD-based DMD and the FFT. The figures demonstrate the equivalence of the SVD-based DMD and the decomposition with DFT/FFT for the time series with zero mean value. The results of DMD of the uPSP measurements of the SLS ATAT in September 2019 are presented in the paper. The DMD modes at different frequencies are shown, the aerodynamic phenomena (e.g. shockwave and vortex shedding) are demonstrated and the correlation of the DMD modes with the test configuration parameter (e.g., the Mach Number) is discussed. Figure 3 shows a software tool to visualize the DMD modes. The code to implement the algorithm described in this paper was written in C, with libraries of FFTW for FFT and MPI/OpenMP for parallel processing, and executed on the NASA Pleiades supercomputer. Funding for this research was provided by the NASA Aerosciences Evaluation and Test Capabilities Project.

Pressure-Sensitive Paint↗

Spectroscopic Study of Solar Transition Region Oscillations in the Quiet-Sun Observed By IRIS Using Si IV Spectral Line

In the present paper, we use Si IV 1393.755 Å spectral line observed by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) in the quiet-Sun to determine physical nature of the solar transition region (TR) oscillations. We analyze the properties of these oscillations using wavelet tools (e.g., power, cross-power, coherence, and phase difference) along with the stringent noise model (i.e., power-law + constant). We estimate the period of the intensity and Doppler velocity oscillations at each chosen location in the quiet-Sun (QS) and quantify the distribution of the statistically significant power and associated periods in one bright and two dark regions. In the bright TR region, the mean periods in intensity and velocity are 7 min, and 8 min respectively. In the dark region, the mean periods in intensity and velocity are 7 min, and 5.4 min respectively. We also estimate the phase difference between the intensity and Doppler velocity oscillations at each location. The statistical distribution of phase difference is estimated, which peaks at -119°± 13°, 33°± 10°, 102°± 10° in the bright region, while at -153°± 13°, 6°± 20°, 151°± 10° in the dark region. The statistical distribution reveals that the oscillations are caused by propagating slow magnetoacoustic waves encountered with the TR. Some of these locations may also be associated with the standing slow waves. Even, in the given time domain, several locations exhibit presence of both propagating and standing oscillations at different frequencies.

Sun: oscillations↗

Spectroscopic Study of Solar Transition Region Oscillations in the Quiet-Sun Observed By IRIS Using the Si IV Spectral Line

In this paper, we use the Si IV 1393.755 Å spectral line observed by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) in the quiet-Sun (QS) to determine the physical nature of the solar transition region (TR) oscillations. We analyse the properties of these oscillations using wavelet tools (e.g. power, cross-power, coherence, and phase difference) along with the stringent noise model (i.e. power law + constant). We estimate the period of the intensity and Doppler velocity oscillations at each chosen location in the QS and quantify the distribution of the statistically significant power and associated periods in one bright region and two dark regions. In the bright TR region, the mean periods in intensity and velocity are 7 min and 8 min, respectively. In the dark regions, the mean periods in intensity and velocity are 7 min and 5.4 min, respectively. We also estimate the phase difference between the intensity and Doppler velocity oscillations at each location. The statistical distribution of the phase difference is estimated, which peaks at −119° ± 13°, 33° ± 10°, 102° ± 10° in the bright region and at −153° ± 13°, 6° ± 20°, 151° ± 10° in the dark regions. The statistical distribution reveals that the oscillations are caused by propagating slow magneto-acoustic waves encountered with the TR. Some of these locations may also be associated with standing slow waves. Moreover, in the given time domain, several locations exhibit the presence of both propagating and standing oscillations at different frequencies.

MHD – Sun: oscillations↗

A Machine Learning Ready Dataset of Acoustic Power Maps for Detection of Active Region Emergence

The development of an accurate forecast for solar eruptive activity has become increasingly important in order to prevent any potential impact on activities in space and the Earth's environment. It is therefore crucial to detect active regions before they appear on the solar surface and create early warning capabilities for upcoming Space Weather disturbances. In this work, 9TB of solar data (SDO/HMI dopplergrams, magnetograms and continuum intensity maps) involving the emergence of 61 NOAA solar active regions since 2010 were processed using the NASA HECC capabilities. An acoustic power maps time-series dataset was created (for four different frequency ranges and processed to take into account the solar sphere geometric effect ) which can be used for understanding the dynamics of the solar surface and train a variety of ML models. The calculated acoustic power maps carry precursor information associated with the decrease in continuum intensity on the solar surface, verifying older helioseismology research. Our results show that a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTMs) model, with a modest layer depth and the right hyperparameters tuned, when trained on this solar acoustic power maps dataset can predict without false negatives a drop in intensity (associated with the emergence of the active region), up to 18 hours in advance.

SMD↗

Progress of 2.05 uM Fiber Laser Development for A Martian Co2 Dial

We have proposed a new concept for differential absorption lidar (DIAL) operating in the 2050 nm CO 2 absorption band for atmospheric CO 2 and pressure observations on Mars. This concept has earned us funding from NASA's PICASSO Program to advance 2050 nm fiber laser technology for future space applications. The laser design is an all-fiber master oscillator and power amplifier (MOPA) system. The master oscillator with pulse shaping and several stages of fiber preamplifiers has been built. Preliminary tests show the output pulse energy can reach 1 mJ, meeting our baseline goal. However, the current power amplifier design has an issue with undesired parasitic lasing at a different frequency, which exhausts pump energy and limits the laser energy. We have modified the power amplifier design to suppress parasitic lasing, and higher laser power energy is expected. To achieve high measurement accuracy, the laser frequency must be stabilized. A fraction of the master oscillator is split to lock the laser frequency to the center of the selected absorption line. The laser can then be shifted to a frequency far from the absorption line center, where extinction due to CO 2 and other trace gases is minimal, serving as the offline reference. The online wavelength is optimized at 2050.44156 nm, ensuring a CO 2 absorption optical depth (AOD) of approximately 1.1 at 3 km, which maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for measurements in the lower Martian atmosphere. At the conference, we will provide more details about this project and report on the progress of instrument development.

DIAL↗

Revisiting Theoretical Limits for One-Degree-of-Freedom Wave Energy Converters: Preprint

This work revisits the theoretical limits of one-degree of freedom wave energy converters (WECs). This paper considers the floating sphere used in the Ocean Energy Systems (OES) Task 10 Wave Energy Converter modeling and verification effort for analysis. Analytical equations are derived to determine bounds on the motion amplitude, time-averaged power, and power take-off (PTO) force. A unique result was found that shows the time-averaged power absorbed by a WEC can be defined solely by the inertial properties and the radiation hydrodynamic coefficients. In addition, a unique expression for the PTO force amplitude was derived which has provided upper and lower bounds when resistive control is used to maximize power generation. For complex conjugate control, this same expression can only provide a lower bound as there is theoretically no upper bound. These bounds are used to compare the performance of a floating sphere if it were to extract energy using surge or heave motion. The analysis shows that because of the differences in hydrodynamic coefficients of each oscillating mode there will be different frequency ranges that provide better power capture efficiency. The influence of a motion constraint on power absorption while also utilizing a nonideal power take-off is examined and found to reduce the losses associated with bidirectional energy flow. The expression to calculate the time-averaged power with a nonideal PTO is modified by the mechanical-to-electrical efficiency and the ratio of the PTO spring and damping coefficients. These were separated in the expression which allows for limits to be set on the possible values of PTO coefficients to ensure a net flow of power to the grid.

50 EE - Wind and Water Power Program - Water (EE-4↗

Transducer driving methods and transducer driving systems

Transducer driving methods and transducer driving systems are described. According to one aspect, a transducer driving method includes providing a plurality of initial driving signals to a transducer, wherein each of the initial driving signals has a respective one of a plurality of different frequencies, identifying one of the frequencies where the transducer has a reduced impedance as a result of the provision of one of the initial driving signals having the one frequency to the transducer compared with impedances of the transducer resulting from the provision of others of the initial driving signals having others of the frequencies to the transducer, determining that the identified one of the frequencies is not acceptable for driving the transducer, as a result of the determining, identifying another of the frequencies, and driving the transducer using another driving signal having the another frequency.

Myjak, Mitchell J.↗

Aquatic organism tracking devices, systems and associated methods

Aquatic organism tracking devices, systems and associated methods are described. According to one aspect, an aquatic organism tracking device includes a housing, a transducer coupled with the housing and configured to transmit a data transmission externally of the housing and an aquatic organism associated with the tracking device, a programmable oscillator coupled with the housing, and wherein the programmable oscillator is configured to generate a clock signal having a selected one of a plurality of different frequencies, processing circuitry coupled with the housing and configured to receive the clock signal from the programmable oscillator and to execute a plurality of executable instructions according to the clock signal, a power source coupled with the housing and configured to store electrical energy, and wherein the processing circuitry is configured to control the provision of the electrical energy from the power source to the transducer to generate the data transmission as a result of the execution of the instructions.

Deng, Z. Daniel↗

Mitigating the effects of kickback noise on a comparator

Embodiments herein describe placing a filter network at one of the inputs of the comparator to avoid injecting unequal amounts of kickback noise into the inputs of the comparator. In one embodiment, the filter network matches the impedance seen at the inputs of the comparator. As a result, the amount of kickback noise is essentially equal at the inputs even though the input signals may be at different frequencies. Thus, the kickback noise is essentially cancelled out so that this noise has little to no impact on the output of the comparator.

Hsieh, Kai-An↗

System and method to fuse multiple sources of optical data to generate a high-resolution, frequent and cloud-/gap-free surface reflectance product

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, performing, by a processing system, image fusion using two or more groups of images to generate predicted images, wherein each group of the two or more groups has one of a different resolution, a different frequency temporal pattern or a combination thereof than another of the two or more groups. Gap filling can be performed by the processing system to correct images of the two or more groups. Additional embodiments are disclosed.

Guan, Kaiyu↗

An Arbitrary Time Interval Generator Base on Vernier Clocks with 0.67 ps Adjustable Steps Implemented in FPGA

In TDC testing and timing system implementations, it is often necessary to generate signal pulses with finely adjustable time intervals. In delay cell–based schemes, the adjustment resolution is constrained by the propagation delay of the cells—typically 15–20 ps per step—and is sensitive to temperature and supply voltage variations. This document presents a fully digital approach that uses two vernier clocks, generated by two stages of cascaded phase-locked loops (PLLs) with a slight frequency difference, to achieve adjustable timing intervals through accumulated phase differences. The scheme was validated on two families of low-cost FPGA devices, achieving adjustable step sizes of 0.67 ps and 0.97 ps.

Wu, Jin-yuan [Fermilab] (ORCID:0000000344329521)↗