Engineering topics
Jarnot, Robert F.
Publications and source records attributed to Jarnot, Robert F..
Investigation and Amelioration of Long-Term Instrumental Drifts in Water Vapor and Other 190-Ghz Measurements From the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS)
No abstract provided
XMOS XC-2 Development Board for Mechanical Control and Data Collection
The scanning microwave limb sounder (SMLS) will use technological improvements in low-noise mixers to provide precise data on the Earth s atmospheric composition with high spatial resolution. This project focuses on the design and implementation of a realtime control system needed for airborne engineering tests of the SMLS. The system must coordinate the actuation of optical components using four motors with encoder readback, while collecting synchronized telemetric data from a GPS receiver and 3-axis gyrometric system. A graphical user interface for testing the control system was also designed using Python. Although the system could have been implemented with an FPGA(fieldprogrammable gate array)-based setup, a processor development kit manufactured by XMOS was chosen. The XMOS architecture allows parallel execution of multiple tasks on separate threads, making it ideal for this application. It is easily programmed using XC (a subset of C). The necessary communication interfaces were implemented in software, including Ethernet, with significant cost and time reduction compared to an FPGA-based approach. A simple approach to control the chopper, calibration mirror, and gimbal for the airborne SMLS was needed. The XMOS board allows for multiple threads and real-time data acquisition. The XC-2 development kit is an attractive choice for synchronized, real-time, event-driven applications. The XMOS is based on the transputer microprocessor architecture developed for parallel computing, which is being revamped in this new platform. The XMOS device has multiple cores capable of running parallel applications on separate threads. The threads communicate with each other via user-defined channels capable of transmitting data within the device. XMOS provides a C-based development environment using XC, which eliminates the need for custom tool kits associated with FPGA programming. The XC-2 has four cores and necessary hardware for Ethernet I/O.
EOS MLS Level 1B Data Processing Software
This software is an improvement on Version 2, which was described in EOS MLS Level 1B Data Processing, Version 2.2, NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 33, No. 5 (May 2009), p. 34. It accepts the EOS MLS Level 0 science/engineering data, and the EOS Aura spacecraft ephemeris/attitude data, and produces calibrated instrument radiances and associated engineering and diagnostic data. This version makes the code more robust, improves calibration, provides more diagnostics outputs, defines the Galactic core more finely, and fixes the equator crossing. The Level 1 processing software manages several different tasks. It qualifies each data quantity using instrument configuration and checksum data, as well as data transmission quality flags. Statistical tests are applied for data quality and reasonableness. The instrument engineering data (e.g., voltages, currents, temperatures, and encoder angles) is calibrated by the software, and the filter channel space reference measurements are interpolated onto the times of each limb measurement with the interpolates being differenced from the measurements. Filter channel calibration target measurements are interpolated onto the times of each limb measurement, and are used to compute radiometric gain. The total signal power is determined and analyzed by each digital autocorrelator spectrometer (DACS) during each data integration. The software converts each DACS data integration from an autocorrelation measurement in the time domain into a spectral measurement in the frequency domain, and estimates separately the spectrally, smoothly varying and spectrally averaged components of the limb port signal arising from antenna emission and scattering effects. Limb radiances are also calibrated.
Digital Spectrometers for Interplanetary Science Missions
A fully digital polyphase spectrometer recently developed by the University of California Berkeley Wireless Research Center in conjunction with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory provides a low mass, power, and cost implementation of a spectrum channelizer for submillimeter spectrometers for future missions to the Inner and Outer Solar System. The digital polyphase filter bank spectrometer (PFB) offers broad bandwidth with high spectral resolution, minimal channel-to-channel overlap, and high out-of-band rejection.
FPGA-based hardware/software co-design instrument command-and-control solutions
Traditional design methodology dictates that an instrument electronics platform should consist of a printed circuit board (PCB)—often multiple boards—populated with many components and support electronics. More specifically, each subsystem is composed of numerous integrated circuits (ICs) spread across the board(s), connected with innumerable traces and wires. Additionally, it is often the case that the hardware and software design teams are quite separated—the hardware team designs a board and hands it to a software team, who must then deal with any hardware quirkiness and may need to rewrite software due to inadequately defined interfaces...
The Earth Observing System Microwave Limb Sounder (EOS MLS) on the Aura Satellite
The Earth Observing System Microwave Limb Sounder measures several atmospheric chemical species (OH, HO2, H2O, O3, HCl, ClO, HOCl, BrO, HNO3, N2O, CO, HCN, CH3CN, volcanic SO2), cloud ice, temperature, and geopotential height to improve our understanding of stratospheric ozone chemistry, the interaction of composition and climate, and pollution in the upper troposphere. All measurements are made simultaneously and continuously, during both day and night. The instrument uses heterodyne radiometers that observe thermal emission from the atmospheric limb in broad spectral regions centered near 118, 190, 240, and 640 GHz, and 2.5 THz. It was launched July 15, 2004 on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Aura satellite and started full-up science operations on August 13, 2004. An atmospheric limb scan and radiometric calibration for all bands are performed routinely every 25 s. Vertical profiles are retrieved every 165 km along the suborbital track, covering 82 S to 82 N latitudes on each orbit. Instrument performance to date has been excellent; data have been made publicly available; and initial science results have been obtained.
On Orbit Commissioning of the Earth Observing System Microwave Limb Sounder (EOS MLS) On the Aura Spacecraft
The Microwave Limb Sounder instrument was launched aboard NASA's EOS AURA satellite in July, 2004. The overall scientific objectives for MLS are to measure temperature, pressure, and several important chemical species in the upper troposphere and stratosphere relevant to ozone processes and climate change. MLS consists of a suite of radiometers designed to operate from 11 8 GHz to 2.5 THz, with two antennas (one for 2.5 THz, the other for the lower frequencies) that scan vertically through the atmospheric limb, and spectrometers with spectral resolution of 6 MHz at spectral line centers. This paper describes the on-orbit commissioning the MLS instrument which includes activation and engineering functional verifications and calibrations.
EOS Aura MLS, first year post-launch engineering assessment
This paper discusses the current status of the MLS instrument which now continuously provides data to produce global maps of targeted chemical species as well as temperature, cloud ice, and gravity wave activity. Performance trends are assessed with respect to characterization during initial on-orbit activiation of the instrument, and with data from ground test verification prior to launch.
Global ozone observations from the UARS MLS: An overview of zonal-mean results
Global ozone observations from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) aboard the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) are presented, in both vertically resolved and column abundance formats. The authors review the zonal-mean ozone variations measured over the two and a half years since launch in September 1991. Well-known features such as the annual and semiannual variations are ubiquitous. In the equatorial regions, longer-term changes are believed to be related to the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), with a strong semiannual signal above 20 hPa. Ozone values near 50 hPa exhibit an equatorial low from October 1991 to June 1992, after which the low ozone pattern splits into two subtropical lows (possibly in connection with residual circulation changes tied to the QBO) and returns to an equatorial low in September 1993. The ozone hole development at high southern latitudes is apparent in MLS column data integrated down to 100 hPa, the MLS data reinforce current knowledge of this lower-stratospheric phenomenon by providing a height-dependent view of the variations. The region from 30 deg S to 30 deg N (an area equal to half the global area) shows very little change in the ozone column from year to year and within each year. The most striking ozone changes have occurred at northern midlatitudes, with the October 1992 to July 1993 column values significantly lower than during the prior year. The zonal-mean changes manifest themselves as a slower rate of increase during the 1992/93 winter, and there is some evidence for a lower fall minimum. A recovery occurs during late summer of 1993; early 1994 values are significantly larger than during the two previous winters. The timing and latitudinal extent of the northern midlatitude decreases appear to rule out observed ClO enhancements in the Arctic vortex, with related chemical processing and ozone dilution effects, as a unique cause. Local depletion from ClO-related chemical mechanisms alone is also not sufficient, based on MLS ClO data. The puzzling asymmetric nature of the changes probably requires a dynamical component as an explanation. A combination of effects (including chemical destruction via heterogeneous processes and QBO phasing) apparently needs to be invoked. This dataset will place constraints on future modeling studies, which are required to better understand the source of the observed changes.