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At least 415 records · Page 23

Altimetry and lidar using AlGaAs lasers modulated with pseudo-random codes

We have demonstrated a prototype laser altimeter and lidar which uses a low power AlGaAs laser modulated with a pseudorandom noise (PN) code, a 20 cm diameter telescope, and a photon counting receiver. Measurements to tree canopies over a 400 m horizontal path show strong signals with 5.3 mW average power and a 6.4 msec averaging time. Computer simulations predict lidar performance for various types of scattering performance.

Abshire, James B.↗

Evaluation of the heat transfer module (FAHT) of Failure Analysis Nonlinear Thermal And Structural Integrated Code (FANTASTIC)

The heat transfer module of FANTASTIC Code (FAHT) is studied and evaluated to the extend possible during the ten weeks duration of this project. A brief background of the previous studies is given and the governing equations as modeled in FAHT are discussed. FAHT's capabilities and limitations based on these equations and its coding methodology are explained in detail. It is established that with improper choice of element size and time step FAHT's temperature field prediction at some nodes will be below the initial condition. The source of this unrealistic temperature prediction is identified and a procedure is proposed for avoiding this phenomenon. It is further shown that the proposed procedure will converge to an accurate prediction upon mesh refinement. Unfortunately due to lack of time FAHT's ability to accurately account for pyrolysis and surface ablation has not been verified. Therefore, at the present time it can be stated with confidence that FAHT can accurately predict the temperature field for a transient multi-dimensional, orthotropic material with directional dependence, variable property, with nonlinear boundary condition. Such a prediction will provide an upper limit for the temperature field in an ablating decomposing nozzle liner. The pore pressure field, however, will not be known.

Keyhani, Majid↗

Flexible User Radio for Lunar Missions

NASA’s Artemis program and other lunar exploration and development programs are planning over 40 lunar missions before 2030. Lunar missions, both crewed and uncrewed, include orbiters, landers, rovers, and surface stations. All these missions require communications with Earth, either via Direct to Earth (DTE) links or through relays in lunar orbit. Multiple DTE options are available among existing and planned ground stations: Deep Space Network (DSN), European Space Agency, and others. Relay options include the planned Lunar Gateway, LunaNet compliant relays, and some lunar landers propose to launch dedicated orbiters. The dilemma for lunar system designers is to identify a communication link which meets mission requirements but does not have issues of limited access (e.g. DSN is in high demand supporting deep space missions with high priority and some with inflexible schedules), system impacts (high power Radio Frequency (RF) for DTE links), cost (dedicated relay), or operational date. To avoid this difficult decision, a Flexible Radio for Lunar Missions is proposed, which will enable system designs to proceed prior to any final decision on the communication network to be used, by enabling compatibility with any of multiple DTE or orbital relay communication systems. The Flexible Radio will support the necessary frequency, bandwidth, modulation, and power requirements to interoperate with the majority of known or planned DTE or relay systems, and can be designed into a lunar mission without prior knowledge of which link will ultimately be used. Furthermore, the link being used can be changed as needed during the mission, in near real time. The Flexible Radio design will leverage work already completed at NASA in the areas of Wideband RF, Software Defined Radio, Adaptive Coding and Modulation, and Phased Array antennas. The Flexible Radio requires sufficient bandwidth to cover the allocated frequencies for both the operation of links in cislunar space and for space-to-Earth links; the flexibility to support multiple modulations, data rates, and coding schemes; the ability to identify available relays, detect and recognize the signals of those relays, and adapt its own frequency, modulation, symbol rate, and code rate to operate with the detected relay (or DTE station); and finally, it requires appropriate software to support network configuration and interoperability with the detected network. The Flexible Radio can be designed in a sufficiently small, lightweight, and low-power package to be used in a wide variety of lunar systems. The initial implementation, as proposed, will focus on the Ka-band, supporting up to 2 GHz bandwidth around the 27 GHz frequency for return links, and 23 GHz for forward links. Other frequency bands are under consideration for future configurations. The software defined modem will support OQPSK, BPSK, and NASA-defined modulations which also support two-way ranging with data. For near-real time adaptation, the Flexible Radio will scan the sky for available relays, using a phased array antenna with Adaptive/Cognitive Communications. It will then configure for network interoperability supporting DTN and other protocol options. The Flexible Radio will support scheduled connections and on-demand use when available.

Lunar Space Communications↗

Flexible User Radio for Lunar Missions

NASA’s Artemis program and other lunar exploration and development programs are planning over 40 lunar missions before 2030. Lunar missions, both crewed and uncrewed, include orbiters, landers, rovers, and surface stations. All these missions require communications with Earth, either via Direct to Earth (DTE) links or through relays in lunar orbit. Multiple DTE options are available among existing and planned ground stations: Deep Space Network (DSN), European Space Agency, and others. Relay options include the planned Lunar Gateway, LunaNet compliant relays, and some lunar landers propose to launch dedicated orbiters. The dilemma for lunar system designers is to identify a communication link which meets mission requirements but does not have issues of limited access (e.g. DSN is in high demand supporting deep space missions with high priority and some with inflexible schedules), system impacts (high power Radio Frequency (RF) for DTE links), cost (dedicated relay), or operational date. To avoid this difficult decision, a Flexible Radio for Lunar Missions is proposed, which will enable system designs to proceed prior to any final decision on the communication network to be used, by enabling compatibility with any of multiple DTE or orbital relay communication systems. The Flexible Radio will support the necessary frequency, bandwidth, modulation, and power requirements to interoperate with the majority of known or planned DTE or relay systems, and can be designed into a lunar mission without prior knowledge of which link will ultimately be used. Furthermore, the link being used can be changed as needed during the mission, in near real time. The Flexible Radio design will leverage work already completed at NASA in the areas of Wideband RF, Software Defined Radio, Adaptive Coding and Modulation, and Phased Array antennas. The Flexible Radio requires sufficient bandwidth to cover the allocated frequencies for both the operation of links in cislunar space and for space-to-Earth links; the flexibility to support multiple modulations, data rates, and coding schemes; the ability to identify available relays, detect and recognize the signals of those relays, and adapt its own frequency, modulation, symbol rate, and code rate to operate with the detected relay (or DTE station); and finally, it requires appropriate software to support network configuration and interoperability with the detected network. The Flexible Radio can be designed in a sufficiently small, lightweight, and low-power package to be used in a wide variety of lunar systems. The initial implementation, as proposed, will focus on the Ka-band, supporting up to 2 GHz bandwidth around the 27 GHz frequency for return links, and 23 GHz for forward links. Other frequency bands are under consideration for future configurations. The software defined modem will support OQPSK, BPSK, and NASA-defined modulations which also support two-way ranging with data. For near-real time adaptation, the Flexible Radio will scan the sky for available relays, using a phased array antenna with Adaptive/Cognitive Communications. It will then configure for network interoperability supporting DTN and other protocol options. The Flexible Radio will support scheduled connections and on-demand use when available.

Lunar Space Communications↗

Optimizations of a Hardware Decoder for Deep-Space Optical Communications

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has developed a capacity approaching modulation and coding scheme that comprises a serial concatenation of an inner accumulate pulse-position modulation (PPM) and an outer convolutional code [or serially concatenated PPM (SCPPM)] for deep-space optical communications. Decoding of this code uses the turbo principle. However, due to the nonbinary property of SCPPM, a straightforward application of classical turbo decoding is very inefficient. Here, we present various optimizations applicable in hardware implementation of the SCPPM decoder. More specifically, we feature a Super Gamma computation to efficiently handle parallel trellis edges, a pipeline-friendly 'maxstar top-2' circuit that reduces the max-only approximation penalty, a low-latency cyclic redundancy check circuit for window-based decoders, and a high-speed algorithmic polynomial interleaver that leads to memory savings. Using the featured optimizations, we implement a 6.72 megabits-per-second (Mbps) SCPPM decoder on a single field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Compared to the current data rate of 256 kilobits per second from Mars, the SCPPM coded scheme represents a throughput increase of more than twenty-six fold. Extension to a 50-Mbps decoder on a board with multiple FPGAs follows naturally. We show through hardware simulations that the SCPPM coded system can operate within 1 dB of the Shannon capacity at nominal operating conditions.

quadratic polynomial interleaver↗

Error-correction coding

This report describes the progress made towards the completion of a specific task on error-correcting coding. The proposed research consisted of investigating the use of modulation block codes as the inner code of a concatenated coding system in order to improve the overall space link communications performance. The study proposed to identify and analyze candidate codes that will complement the performance of the overall coding system which uses the interleaved RS (255,223) code as the outer code.

Hinds, Erold W.↗

Punctured Parallel and Serial Concatenated Convolutional Codes for BPSK/QPSK Channels

As available bandwidth for communication applications becomes scarce, bandwidth-efficient modulation and coding schemes become ever important. Since their discovery in 1993, turbo codes (parallel concatenated convolutional codes) have been the center of the attention in the coding community because of their bit error rate performance near the Shannon limit. Serial concatenated convolutional codes have also been shown to be as powerful as turbo codes. In this dissertation, we introduce algorithms for designing bandwidth-efficient rate r = k/(k + 1),k = 2, 3,..., 16, parallel and rate 3/4, 7/8, and 15/16 serial concatenated convolutional codes via puncturing for BPSK/QPSK (Binary Phase Shift Keying/Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) channels. Both parallel and serial concatenated convolutional codes have initially, steep bit error rate versus signal-to-noise ratio slope (called the -"cliff region"). However, this steep slope changes to a moderate slope with increasing signal-to-noise ratio, where the slope is characterized by the weight spectrum of the code. The region after the cliff region is called the "error rate floor" which dominates the behavior of these codes in moderate to high signal-to-noise ratios. Our goal is to design high rate parallel and serial concatenated convolutional codes while minimizing the error rate floor effect. The design algorithm includes an interleaver enhancement procedure and finds the polynomial sets (only for parallel concatenated convolutional codes) and the puncturing schemes that achieve the lowest bit error rate performance around the floor for the code rates of interest.

Acikel, Omer Fatih↗

Advanced Intelligent System Application to Load Forecasting and Control for Hybrid Electric Bus

The primary motivation for this research emanates from providing a decision support system to the electric bus operators in the municipal and urban localities which will guide the operators to maintain an optimal compromise among the noise level, pollution level, fuel usage etc. This study is backed up by our previous studies on study of battery characteristics, permanent magnet DC motor studies and electric traction motor size studies completed in the first year. The operator of the Hybrid Electric Car must determine optimal power management schedule to meet a given load demand for different weather and road conditions. The decision support system for the bus operator comprises three sub-tasks viz. forecast of the electrical load for the route to be traversed divided into specified time periods (few minutes); deriving an optimal 'plan' or 'preschedule' based on the load forecast for the entire time-horizon (i.e., for all time periods) ahead of time; and finally employing corrective control action to monitor and modify the optimal plan in real-time. A fully connected artificial neural network (ANN) model is developed for forecasting the kW requirement for hybrid electric bus based on inputs like climatic conditions, passenger load, road inclination, etc. The ANN model is trained using back-propagation algorithm employing improved optimization techniques like projected Lagrangian technique. The pre-scheduler is based on a Goal-Programming (GP) optimization model with noise, pollution and fuel usage as the three objectives. GP has the capability of analyzing the trade-off among the conflicting objectives and arriving at the optimal activity levels, e.g., throttle settings. The corrective control action or the third sub-task is formulated as an optimal control model with inputs from the real-time data base as well as the GP model to minimize the error (or deviation) from the optimal plan. These three activities linked with the ANN forecaster proving the output to the GP model which in turn produces the pre-schedule of the optimal control model. Some preliminary results based on a hypothetical test case will be presented for the load forecasting module. The computer codes for the three modules will be made available fe adoption by bus operating agencies. Sample results will be provided using these models. The software will be a useful tool for supporting the control systems for the Electric Bus project of NASA.

Momoh, James↗

Spread-spectrum code acquisition in the presence of Doppler shift and data modulation

A spread-spectrum code acquisition technique for a direct-sequence (DS) system in the presence of Doppler effect and data modulation is investigated. Both the carrier-frequency offset and code-frequency offset due to severe Doppler effect are considered. The code-chip slipping during the correlation process caused by code-frequency offset can degrade the acquisition performance significantly. However, this issue can be alleviated by compensating code-frequency offset in an appropriate manner. Results are presented for the cases with and without data modulation. Coherent detection is considered when there is no data modulation. If data modulation is present, the authors partition the correlation time into subintervals and the integration results in these subintervals are square-law noncoherently combined for detection. The implementation of this code acquisition technique using the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm is described. The use of theoretical results to estimate the hardware complexity of an actual system is illustrated step by step, showing that implementation is feasible with existing technology. The tradeoff between hardware complexity and acquisition performance is discussed.

Cheng, Unjeng↗

Hardware Implementation of Serially Concatenated PPM Decoder

A prototype decoder for a serially concatenated pulse position modulation (SCPPM) code has been implemented in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). At the time of this reporting, this is the first known hardware SCPPM decoder. The SCPPM coding scheme, conceived for free-space optical communications with both deep-space and terrestrial applications in mind, is an improvement of several dB over the conventional Reed-Solomon PPM scheme. The design of the FPGA SCPPM decoder is based on a turbo decoding algorithm that requires relatively low computational complexity while delivering error-rate performance within approximately 1 dB of channel capacity. The SCPPM encoder consists of an outer convolutional encoder, an interleaver, an accumulator, and an inner modulation encoder (more precisely, a mapping of bits to PPM symbols). Each code is describable by a trellis (a finite directed graph). The SCPPM decoder consists of an inner soft-in-soft-out (SISO) module, a de-interleaver, an outer SISO module, and an interleaver connected in a loop (see figure). Each SISO module applies the Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv (BCJR) algorithm to compute a-posteriori bit log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) from apriori LLRs by traversing the code trellis in forward and backward directions. The SISO modules iteratively refine the LLRs by passing the estimates between one another much like the working of a turbine engine. Extrinsic information (the difference between the a-posteriori and a-priori LLRs) is exchanged rather than the a-posteriori LLRs to minimize undesired feedback. All computations are performed in the logarithmic domain, wherein multiplications are translated into additions, thereby reducing complexity and sensitivity to fixed-point implementation roundoff errors. To lower the required memory for storing channel likelihood data and the amounts of data transfer between the decoder and the receiver, one can discard the majority of channel likelihoods, using only the remainder in operation of the decoder. This is accomplished in the receiver by transmitting only a subset consisting of the likelihoods that correspond to time slots containing the largest numbers of observed photons during each PPM symbol period. The assumed number of observed photons in the remaining time slots is set to the mean of a noise slot. In low background noise, the selection of a small subset in this manner results in only negligible loss. Other features of the decoder design to reduce complexity and increase speed include (1) quantization of metrics in an efficient procedure chosen to incur no more than a small performance loss and (2) the use of the max-star function that allows sum of exponentials to be computed by simple operations that involve only an addition, a subtraction, and a table lookup. Another prominent feature of the design is a provision for access to interleaver and de-interleaver memory in a single clock cycle, eliminating the multiple clock-cycle latency characteristic of prior interleaver and de-interleaver designs.

Moision, Bruce↗

Proceedings of the Fifth International Mobile Satellite Conference 1997

Satellite-based mobile communications systems provide voice and data communications to users over a vast geographic area. The users may communicate via mobile or hand-held terminals, which may also provide access to terrestrial communications services. While previous International Mobile Satellite Conferences have concentrated on technical advances and the increasing worldwide commercial activities, this conference focuses on the next generation of mobile satellite services. The approximately 80 papers included here cover sessions in the following areas: networking and protocols; code division multiple access technologies; demand, economics and technology issues; current and planned systems; propagation; terminal technology; modulation and coding advances; spacecraft technology; advanced systems; and applications and experiments.

T. Jedrey↗

Coding/modulation trade-offs for Shuttle wideband data links

This paper describes various modulation and coding schemes which are potentially applicable to the Shuttle wideband data relay communications link. This link will be capable of accommodating up to 50 Mbps of scientific data and will be subject to a power constraint which forces the use of channel coding. Although convolutionally encoded coherent binary PSK is the tentative signal design choice for the wideband data relay link, FM techniques are of interest because of the associated hardware simplicity and because an FM system is already planned to be available for transmission of television via relay satellite to the ground. Binary and M-ary FSK are considered as candidate modulation techniques, and both coherent and noncoherent ground station detection schemes are examined. The potential use of convolutional coding is considered in conjunction with each of the candidate modulation techniques.

Batson, B. H.↗

Hamming and Accumulator Codes Concatenated with MPSK or QAM

In a proposed coding-and-modulation scheme, a high-rate binary data stream would be processed as follows: 1. The input bit stream would be demultiplexed into multiple bit streams. 2. The multiple bit streams would be processed simultaneously into a high-rate outer Hamming code that would comprise multiple short constituent Hamming codes a distinct constituent Hamming code for each stream. 3. The streams would be interleaved. The interleaver would have a block structure that would facilitate parallelization for high-speed decoding. 4. The interleaved streams would be further processed simultaneously into an inner two-state, rate-1 accumulator code that would comprise multiple constituent accumulator codes - a distinct accumulator code for each stream. 5. The resulting bit streams would be mapped into symbols to be transmitted by use of a higher-order modulation - for example, M-ary phase-shift keying (MPSK) or quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). The novelty of the scheme lies in the concatenation of the multiple-constituent Hamming and accumulator codes and the corresponding parallel architectures of the encoder and decoder circuitry (see figure) needed to process the multiple bit streams simultaneously. As in the cases of other parallel-processing schemes, one advantage of this scheme is that the overall data rate could be much greater than the data rate of each encoder and decoder stream and, hence, the encoder and decoder could handle data at an overall rate beyond the capability of the individual encoder and decoder circuits.

Divsalar, Dariush↗

Bandwidth and power efficient satellite TDMA demodulator and decoder

A proof-of-concept demodulator for TDMA applications requiring high total data rates composed of many low data rate users is proposed. High-spectrum efficiency is obtained via a bandwidth efficient combined modulation and coding system, and low TDMA overhead is obtained via a fast acquiring digital phase lock loop. The system employs a data rate of 200 Mb/s with a bit error rate of better than 5 x 10 to the -7th in the presence of adjacent channel interference 20 dB above the weakest user. The 8-PSK modulation combined with the rate 5/6 forward error correction coding results in a bandwidth efficiency of better than 2 bits/second per Hz.

Ames, Stephen A.↗

Coding for a multiple-access channel

In a simple multiple-access communication system, two geographically separated users attempt to communicate binary data to two data sinks over a common channel called a multiple access channel. User one sends codewords from a block code C sub one, while user two sends codewords from a block code C sub two. The two users occupy the same frequency slot, transmit at the same time, and use the same type of modulation. Block codes which are uniquely decodable and capable of correcting errors are constructed for two multiple-access channel models. The first model is referred to as a noiseless multiple-access binary erasure channel. If the two transmitted bits from the two users are zeros, a zero is transmitted over the channel to the receiver; if the two transmitted bits are ones, a one is transmitted to the receiver; if the two bits are different, an erasure symbol is transmitted to the receiver. The second model is also a multiple-access binary erasure channel but with noise introduced.

Kasami, T.↗

Rate 8/9 coded 8-PSK system for downlink applications

An advanced Coded Trellis Modulation (CTM) System which achieves a 2 bits/s/Hz bandwidth efficiency at an information rate of 200 Mbit/s while minimizing satellite power requirements, was developed for downlink earth station applications. The CTM system employs a high-speed rate 8/9 convolutional code with Viterbi decoding and an 8-Phase Shift Keying (PSK) modem. The minimum Euclidean distance between the modulated waveforms corresponding to the information sequences are maximized in order to maximize the noise immunity of the system. Nyquist filters with a square-root of 40 percent roll-off are used at the transmit and receive sides of the modem in order to minimize intersymbol interference, adjacent channel interference, and distortion at the nonlinear satellite power amplifier. The use of a coded system here also minimizes the effects of co-channel interference. The developed performance of the hardware system was measured to achieve within 1.5 dB from theory at a bit error rate of 5 x 10(exp -7) over an additive white Gaussian noise channel.

Fang, Russell↗