An event-coder for evoked potential studies
Pulse coding system for average evoked EEG potential data acquisition and analysis, describing pulse generation circuitry and computer implemented logic
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Pulse coding system for average evoked EEG potential data acquisition and analysis, describing pulse generation circuitry and computer implemented logic
The findings and data products developed during the Phase 2 crew interface specification study are presented. Five new NASA general specifications were prepared: operations location coding system for crew interfaces; loose equipment and stowage management requirements; loose equipment and stowage data base information requirements; spacecraft loose equipment stowage drawing requirements; and inflight stowage management data requirements. Additional data was developed defining inflight maintenance processes and related data concepts for inflight troubleshooting, remove/repair/replace and scheduled maintenance activities. The process of maintenance task and equipment definition during spacecraft design and development was also defined and related data concepts were identified for futher development into formal NASA specifications during future follow-on study phases of the contract.
Description of a 40-Mbps hard-decision sequential decoder for high-data-rate coding systems for earth-orbiting space missions with power-limited links. A prototype decoder has been designed and fabricated using the fastest commercially available digital integrated circuits, MECL III. Thus far, an internal computational rate of 70 million computations per second has been achieved. Computational efficiency of the decoding algorithm was greatly improved by incorporating two modifications to the Fano algorithm - 'double quick threshold loosening' and 'diagonal steps.' Preliminary results indicate that an output error rate of 0.00001 can be achieved with E sub b/N sub zero less than 5.4 dB at data rates up to 40 Mbps. At lower data rates, even less signal energy is required. This decoder is believed to be at least five times faster than any previous sequential decoder.
Studies have shown that there is a severe signal fading at the turbulent atmosphere of a distant planet such as Venus. The data may be lost during deep fade. It is the objective of this paper to examine the effects of multipath fading on the performance of the noncoherent coded system which is used for the low data-rate space communications especially with the small probes. An exact error probability of the wideband noncoherent MFSK receiver is derived from using the 'Rician' channel model. While the error performance of the receiver is worse than that of the ideal MFSK receiver, as expected, it is interesting to note that the performance degradation due to the multipath fading diminishes as the product of bit duration and IF filter bandwidth becomes large.
Preflight photographs of selected Apollo 17 equipment taken for use in determining the effects on various surfaces of long-term exposure to the lunar environment are presented. Photographs of the articles deployed on the lunar surface also are included. The photographic procedure and the coding system used for the photodocumentation are explained. Other documentation measures planned to obtain items for use as controls in projected analyses are discussed.
This paper is primarily a review of recent developments in the abiotic synthesis of nucleotides, short chain oligonucleotides, and their mode of replication in solution. It also presents preliminary results from this laboratory on the prebiotic synthesis of thymidine oligodeoxynucleotides. A discussion, based on the physicochemical properties of RNA and DNA oligomers, relevant to the molecular evolution of these compounds leads to the tentative hypothesis that oligodeoxyribonucleotides of about 12 units may have been of sufficient length to initiate a self replicating coding system. Two models are suggested to account for the synthesis of high molecular weight oligomers using short chain templates and primers.
It is shown that (n sub 0, k sub 0) convolutional codes with unit memory always achieve the largest free distance among all codes of the same rate k sub 0/n sub 0 and same number 2MK sub 0 of encoder states, where M is the encoder memory. A unit-memory code with maximal free distance is given at each place where this free distance exceeds that of the best code with k sub 0 and n sub 0 relatively prime, for all Mk sub 0 less than or equal to 6 and for R = 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 2/3. It is shown that the unit-memory codes are byte-oriented in such a way as to be attractive for use in concatenated coding systems.
The performance of short constraint length convolutional codes in conjunction with binary phase-shift keyed (BPSK) modulation and Viterbi maximum likelihood decoding on the classical Rician fading channel is examined in detail. Primary interest is in the bit error probability performance as a function of E sub b/N sub 0 parameterized by the fading channel parameters. Fairly general upper bounds on bit error probability performance in the presence of fading are obtained and compared with simulation results in the two extremes of zero channel memory and infinite channel memory. The efficacy of simple block interleaving in combating the memory of the channel is thoroughly explored. Results include the effects of fading on tracking loop performance and the subsequent impact on overall coded system performance. The approach is analytical where possible; otherwise resort is made to digital computer simulation.
The bit error probability performance of a differentially-coherent phase-shift keyed (DPSK) modem with convolutional encoding and Viterbi decoding on time-varying fading channels is examined. Both the Rician and the lognormal channels are considered. Bit error probability upper bounds on fully-interleaved (zero-memory) fading channels are derived and substantiated by computer simulation. It is shown that the resulting coded system performance is a relatively insensitive function of the choice of channel model provided that the channel parameters are related according to the correspondence developed as part of this paper. Finally, a comparison of DPSK with a number of other modulation strategies is provided.
The use of silicon photodiode sensors and locator systems for lightning experiments is discussed. Tables are presented on: (1) satellite optical lightning experiments (silicon detectors); (2) reticon photodiode linear arrays; and (3) locator systems (grey code and reticon). An illustration of a grey code locator system for a low altitude satellite is also given.
Time-shared interface speeds data processing in distributed computer network. Two-level high-speed scanning approach routes information to buffer, portion of which is reserved for series of "first-in, first-out" memory stacks. Buffer address structure and memory are protected from noise or failed components by error correcting code. System is applicable to any computer or processing language.
An explicit class of discrete memoryless channels (q-ary erasure channels) is exhibited. Practical and explicit coded systems of rate R with R/R sub o as large as desired can be designed for this class.
The concatenated Reed-Solomon (RS)/Viterbi coding system is reviewed. The performance of the system is analyzed and results are derived with a new simple approach. A functional model for the input RS symbol error probability is presented. Based on this new functional model, we compute the performance of a concatenated system in terms of RS word error probability, output RS symbol error probability, bit error probability due to decoding failure, and bit error probability due to decoding error. Finally we analyze the effects of the noisy carrier reference and the slow fading on the system performance.
At very low signal to noise ratios such as those that Voyager 2 will encounter at Uranus, the performance of the Reed-Solomon/Viterbi concatenated coding system could be seriously degraded by loss of node synchronization by the Viterbi decoder. This problem is described and now it can be almost completely avoided with a simple outboard hardware ""node synchronizer''. This device makes statistical decisions about node sync based on the hard quantized undecoded data stream. In a worst case Voyager-like environment, our method will detect and correct a true loss of node sync (thought to be a very rate event) within several hundred bits; many of these false alarms for our technique is on the order several years.
The procedure used to generate MEBES masks and produce test wafers from the 10X Mann 1600 Pattern Generator Tape using existing CAD utility programs and the MEBES machine in the RCA Solid State Technology Center are described. The test vehicle used is the MSFC-designed SC102 Solar House Timing Circuit. When transforming the Mann 1600 tapes into MEBES tapes, extreme care is required in order to obtain accurate minimum linewidths when working with two different coding systems because the minimum grid sizes may be different for the two systems. The minimum grid sizes are 0.025 mil for MSFC Mann 1600 and 0.02 mil for MEBES. Some snapping to the next grid is therefore inevitable, and the results of this snapping effect are significant when submicron lines are present. However, no problem was noticed in the SC102 circuit because its minimum linewidth is 0.3 mil (7.6 microns). MEBES masks were fabricated and wafers were processed using the silicon-gate CMOS/SOS and aluminum-gate COS/MOS processing.
At very low signal to noise ratios such as those that Voyager 2 will encounter at Uranus, the performance of the Reed-Solomon/Viterbi concatenated coding system could be seriously degraded by loss of node synchronization by the Viterbi decoder. This problem is described and now it can be almost completely avoided with a simple outboard hardware 'node synchronizer'. This device makes statistical decisions about node sync based on the hard quantized undecoded data stream. In a worst case Voyager-like environment, our method will detect and correct a true loss of node sync (thought to be a very rare event) within several hundred bits; many of these false alarms for our technique is on the order several years. Previously announced in STAR as N83-28028
During the period June 1, 1986 through November 30, 1986, progress was made in the following areas: undetected error probability and throughput analysis of a concatenated coding scheme; capacity and cutoff rate analysis of concatenated codes; concatenated codes using bandwidth efficient trellis inner codes; bounds on the minimum free Euclidean distance of bandwidth efficient trellis codes; and construction of multidimensional bandwidth efficient trellis codes for use as inner codes in a concatenated coding system.
Several techniques useful in the analysis of data from coded-mask telescopes are presented. Methods of handling changes in the instrument pointing direction are reviewed and ways of using FFT techniques to do the deconvolution considered. Emphasis is on techniques for optimally-coded systems, but it is shown that the range of systems included in this class can be extended through the new concept of 'partial cycle averaging'.