Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Wu, Chialin.
The Mars Science Laboratory's rover named Curiosity successfully landed on Mars on August 6, 2012. One component of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) system was the Terminal Descent Sensor (TDS) landing radar. In this paper we describe laboratory testing of this radar performed before launch.
CloudSat is a joint US/Canadian spaceborne science mission for global measurements of atmospheric cloud structures. Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) has already captured many stunning profiles of cloud/precipitation structures, some have not been seen before. Observation of storms' cloud formation, in conjunction with data from other remote sensors, will hopefully improve quality of natural hazards' forecasts.
The CloudSat Mission is a new satellite mission jointly developed by NASA, JPL, the Canadian Agency, Colorado State University, and the US AirForce to acquire a global data set of vertical cloud structure and its variability.
The Cloud Profiling Radar is the key science instrument for the CloudSat Mission to acquire a global data set of vertical atmospheric cloud structure and its variability. CPR is a 94 GHz nadir-looking radar that measures the power backscattered by clouds as a function of distance from the radar. This sensor is expected to provide cloud measurements at a 500-m vertical resolution and a 1.5-km horizontal resolution. CPR will operate in a short pulse mode and will yield measurements at a minimum detectable sensitivity of -28 dBZ.
Proposed frequency-modulation (FM) radar system uses sawtooth-wave-form linear frequency sweeps and return-signal-processing scheme in which samples of signals from N consecutive sweep periods are combined to multiply range resolution by factor of N. System "synthesizes" bandwith N times that of transmitted signal in sense that to increase resolution of ordinary radar system where consecutive samples are not combined, it is necessary to increase bandwidth of transmitted signal by same factor. Used in FM radar altimeters.