Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Allan deviation”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2016

Preliminary Investigation of Onboard Orbit Determination Using Deep Space Atomic Clock Based Radio Tracking

The Deep Space Atomic Clock mission is developing a small, mercury ion atomic clock with Allan deviation of less than 1e-14 at one day (current estimates < 3e-15) for a yearlong space demonstration beginning late- 2016/early-2017. DSAC’s stability yields one-way radiometric data precision on par with current two-way data. Uplink one-way tracking with an appropriately configured radio enables the possibility of onboard, autonomous radio navigation. This study examines the modeling needed to efficiently process this data for an onboard implementation.

Ely, Todd A.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Ultra-stable oscillators for planetary entry probes

This paper presents the development of ultra-stable oscillators on deep space missions and selecting oscillators for planetary entry probes, including factors such as duration of the experiment, the available warm-up time and the Allan deviation and phase noise requirements.

ultra↗
NASA NTRS2019

Frequency comparisons via GPS carrier-phase: jump processing, temperature compensation and zero/short-baseline noise-floors

GPS carrier-phase receivers have been used to produce high quality time/frequency comparisons between clocks and frequency standards. Current ways of processing the carrier-phase data, however, result in phase jumps and data gaps that make the data difficult to use effectively and repeatedly for long datasets. In addition, temperature fluctuations generally perturb receiver output detrimentally. We describe the steps of a simple but effective automated algorithm for comparing frequencies that can compensate for data gaps, day boundary jumps, and other phase jumps as well as for temperature disturbances. We describe process features and focus on zero-baseline noise-floors, measuring Allan deviations of the Deep Space Atomic Clock mission’s receiver down to 1x10-17 at 5x105 seconds, with an upper confidence level of 3x10-17. The zero-baseline noise floors we present give confidence in our algorithm and temperature compensation’s robustness.

Diener, William A.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Radio metric errors due to mismatch and offset between a DSN antenna beam and the beam of a troposphere calibration instrument

Two components of the error of a troposphere calibration measurement were quantified by theoretical calculations. The first component is a beam mismatch error, which occurs when the calibration instrument senses a conical volume different from the cylindrical volume sampled by a Deep Space Network (DSN) antenna. The second component is a beam offset error, which occurs if the calibration instrument is not mounted on the axis of the DSN antenna. These two error sources were calculated for both delay (e.g., VLBI) and delay rate (e.g., Doppler) measurements. The beam mismatch error for both delay and delay rate drops rapidly as the beamwidth of the troposphere calibration instrument (e.g., a water vapor radiometer or an infrared Fourier transform spectrometer) is reduced. At a 10-deg elevation angle, the instantaneous beam mismatch error is 1.0 mm for a 6-deg beamwidth and 0.09 mm for a 0.5-deg beam (these are the full angular widths of a circular beam with uniform gain out to a sharp cutoff). Time averaging for 60-100 sec will reduce these errors by factors of 1.2-2.2. At a 20-deg elevation angle, the lower limit for current Doppler observations, the beam-mismatch delay rate error is an Allan standard deviation over 100 sec of 1.1 x 10(exp -14) with a 4-deg beam and 1.3 x 10(exp -l5) for a 0.5-deg beam. A 50-m beam offset would result in a fairly modest (compared to other expected error sources) delay error (less than or equal to 0.3 mm for 60-sec integrations at any elevation angle is greater than or equal to 6 deg). However, the same offset would cause a large error in delay rate measurements (e.g., an Allan standard deviation of 1.2 x 10(exp -14) over 100 sec at a 20-deg elevation angle), which would dominate over other known error sources if the beamwidth is 2 deg or smaller. An on-axis location is essential for accurate troposphere calibration of delay rate measurements. A half-power beamwidth (for a beam with a tapered gain profile) of 1.2 deg or smaller is desired for calibration of all types of radio metrics. A water-vapor radiometer calibration beam of this size with very low sidelobes would require a clear aperture antenna with a diameter of at least 1.5 m if the primary water vapor sensing channel were in the 20-22 GHz range.

R P Linfield↗
NASA NTRS1981

Coherent reference generator phase stability

Approximate phase stability estimates for the coherent reference generator (CRG) unit in the DSN's Frequency and Timing Subsystem (FTS) are calculated. The method used involves estimating the phase noise introduced by CRG components based upon measurements made in the past on similar components in other parts of the FTS and obtaining the CRG phase noise from the component phase noises. Three estimates of phase stability are calculated: the fractional frequency change for a 5 C step in temperature, the phase noise spectral density, and the Allan standard deviation. It is found from these estimates that the CRG phase stability is better than that of the H-maser physics unit + receiver. Thus, the first step in improving FTS phase stability would be to make improvements in the H-maser physics unit + receiver. These results are corroborated by indirect clock stability estimates calculated from Doppler data.

Korwar, V. N.↗
NASA NTRS1986

The effect of the dynamic wet troposphere on VLBI measurements

Calculations using a statistical model of water vapor fluctuations yield the effect of the dynamic wet troposphere on Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) measurements. The statistical model arises from two primary assumptions: (1) the spatial structure of refractivity fluctuations can be closely approximated by elementary (Kolmogorov) turbulence theory, and (2) temporal fluctuations are caused by spatial patterns which are moved over a site by the wind. The consequences of these assumptions are outlined for the VLBI delay and delay rate observables. For example, wet troposphere induced rms delays for Deep Space Network (DSN) VLBI at 20-deg elevation are about 3 cm of delay per observation, which is smaller, on the average, than other known error sources in the current DSN VLBI data set. At 20-deg elevation for 200-s time intervals, water vapor induces approximately 1.5 x 10 to the minus 13th power s/s in the Allan standard deviation of interferometric delay, which is a measure of the delay rate observable error. In contrast to the delay error, the delay rate measurement error is dominated by water vapor fluctuations. Water vapor induced VLBI parameter errors and correlations are calculated. For the DSN, baseline length parameter errors due to water vapor fluctuations are in the range of 3 to 5 cm. The above physical assumptions also lead to a method for including the water vapor fluctuations in the parameter estimation procedure, which is used to extract baseline and source information from the VLBI observables.

Treuhaft, R. N.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Water vapor radiometer measurements of the tropospheric delay fluctuations at Goldstone over a full year

One year of near-continuous water vapor radiometer (WVR) measurements at DSS 13 has provided a database for characterizing the Goldstone tropospheric delay properties in a statistical sense. The results have been expressed in terms of the Allan standard deviation of delay and compared to a previous model for Goldstone fluctuations and the specifications of the Cassini Gravitational Wave Experiment (GWE). The new WVR data indicate that average fluctuation levels at hour time scales or less are approximately 30 percent lower than the earlier Goldstone model predictions. At greater than 1 h time scales, the WVR indicated fluctuation levels are in closer agreement with the model, although noise floor limitations may be artificially raising the average WVR-derived atmospheric fluctuation levels at the longer time scales. When scaled to two-way Doppler tracking at 20 deg elevation, as will occur for the GWE, these results indicate that Goldstone winter tropospheric delay fluctuations will typically be a factor of 10 larger than the GWE requirements at 1000 s and a factor of 4 larger at 10,000 s.

Keihm, S. J.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Performance of a Ka-band transponder breadboard for deep-space applications

This article summarizes the design concepts applied in the development of and advanced Ka-band (34.4 GHz/32 GHz) transponder breadboard for the next generation of space communications systems applications. The selected architecture upgrades the X-band (7.2 GHz/8.4 GHz) deep-space transponder (DST) to provide Da-band up/Ka- and X-band down capability. The Ka-band transponder breadboard incorporates several state-of-the-art components, including sampling mixers, a Ka-band dielectric resonator oscillator, and microwave monolithic integrated circuits (MMICs). The MMICs that were tested in the breadboard include upconverters, downconverters, automatic gain control circuits, mixers, phase modulators, and amplifiers. The measured receiver dynamic range, tracking range, acquisition rate, static phase error, and phase jitter characteristics of the Ka-band breadboard interfaced to the advanced engineering model X-band DST are in good agreement with the expected performance. The results show a receiver tracking threshold of -149 dBm with a dynamic range of 80 dB and a downlink phase jitter of 7 deg rms. The analytical results of phase noise and Allan standard deviation are in good agreement with the experimental results.

Mysoor, N. R.↗
NASA NTRS2000

Calibrating Atmospheric Delay for the Cassini Gravitational Wave Experiment

The Cassini spacecraft together with one of the stations of the Deep Space Network (DSN) have been instrumented to carry out extremely precise Doppler tracking that will be used to search for the direct evidence of Gravitational radiation passing through our solar system. The two-way communications link between the ground antenna and the spacecraft constitute an "antenna" for gravitational waves that would perturb the phase of the RF signal in the link. The experiments will be carried out during the long cruise phase of the spacecraft on its journey to Saturn and will be sensitive to gravitational wave perturbations larger than the noise level fluctuations of 3 x 10(exp -15) as measured in the Allan Standard Deviation domain. The use of simultaneous, coherent X- and Ka-Band up and down signals will reduce the errors associated with charged particle fluctuations in the interplanetary medium and Earth's ionosphere to a negligible level. The primary fluctuations in the phase of the signals both to and from the spacecraft are expected to be caused by fluctuations in water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere We have designed and are testing a new atmospheric calibration system (with duplicate components) to sense line-of-sight water vapor and its physical temperature with a goal of calibrating 95% or more of tropospheric path delay fluctuations during the Cassini Gravitational Wave Experiment (GWE). The critical component of the calibration system consists of a newly designed water vapor radiometer having a I degree sensing beamwidth and 0.01 K brightness temperature stability over hour time scales. Auxiliary instrumentation includes a microwave temperature profiler to retrieve the vertical distribution of the vapor physical temperature, and surface meteorology. A detailed error budget has been developed to account for all of the possible sources of error during calibration of the GWE and will be discussed. Two identical calibration systems have been constructed in order to provide capability as well as backup during the actual GWE experiment. We will report on side-by-side testing of the vapor and temperature sensing components of this calibrations system as well as a comparison with a short baseline radio interferometric measurement at our Goldstone complex.

Resch, G. M.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Media Calibration in the Deep Space Network: A Status Report

A new media calibration system (MCS) has been implemented at the Goldstone complex of the DSN (Deep Space Network). It is intended to calibrate the delay of radio signals imposed by the neutral atmosphere. The system provides periodic measurements of both the static dry and fluctuating wet components of this delay. In particular, the system will calibrate the fluctuations in line of sight path delay due to atmospheric water vapor that we believe will dominate the error budget for several radio science and radio astronomy experiments. We have compared two of these media calibration systems with a connected element interferometer on a 21 km baseline. In this report we describe a total of 30 observations in which a radio source was tracked for an hour or more and the delay residuals then calibrated using the MCS. The accuracy of the comparison appears to be limited by systematic errors in the interferometer, which are under investigation. However, our results do indicate that the MCS can meet or exceed the two-way Allan standard deviation specification of 1.5 x 10( exp -15) on time scales of 2,000 - 10,000 sec, as required by the Cassini GWE (Gravitational Wave Experiment) for two way Doppler tracking.

Naudet, Charles J.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Characterizing DSN System Frequency Stability with Spacecraft Tracking Data

This paper describes a recent effort in characterizing frequency stability performance of the ground system in the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN). Unlike the traditional approach where performance is obtained from special calibration sessions that are both time consuming and require manual setup, the new method taps into the daily spacecraft tracking data. This method significantly increases the amount of data available for analysis, roughly by two orders of magnitude; making it possible to conduct trend analysis with reasonable confidence. Since the system is monitored daily, any significant variation in performance can be detected timely. This helps the DSN maintain its performance commitment to customers.

performance analysis↗
NASA NTRS2017

A Celestial Reference Frame Based on Kalman Filtering

In this study, we investigate a novel approach to the determination of celestial reference frames (CRF). Instead of a constant model for radio sources positions, we adopt a time series representation, which allows temporal variations of radio source coordinates to be taken into account. In particular, the added flexibility is beneficial for radio sources with extended structure. We compute our time series-based CRF solutions by Kalman filtering and smoothing radio source positions, which are initially obtained from single-session VLBI analysis. The temporal resolution of the estimated CRF coordinates is identical to that of the input data, i.e. usually 1-4 days. The magnitude of the coordinate variations is controlled by the amount of process noise applied in the filter, which is in turn derived from analyzing the Allan standard deviation of the corresponding radio source coordinate time series. Measures have been developed to reduce the impact of observation errors and datum effects on the noise model.

Soja, B.↗
NASA NTRS1997

Deviations from uniform power law scaling in nonstationary time series

A classic problem in physics is the analysis of highly nonstationary time series that typically exhibit long-range correlations. Here we test the hypothesis that the scaling properties of the dynamics of healthy physiological systems are more stable than those of pathological systems by studying beat-to-beat fluctuations in the human heart rate. We develop techniques based on the Fano factor and Allan factor functions, as well as on detrended fluctuation analysis, for quantifying deviations from uniform power-law scaling in nonstationary time series. By analyzing extremely long data sets of up to N = 10(5) beats for 11 healthy subjects, we find that the fluctuations in the heart rate scale approximately uniformly over several temporal orders of magnitude. By contrast, we find that in data sets of comparable length for 14 subjects with heart disease, the fluctuations grow erratically, indicating a loss of scaling stability.

Non-NASA Center↗
NASA NTRS1996

Metastable Solution Thermodynamic Properties and Crystal Growth Kinetics

The crystal growth rates of NH4H2PO4, KH2PO4, (NH4)2SO4, KAl(SO4)2 central dot 12H2O, NaCl, and glycine and the nucleation rates of KBr, KCl, NaBr central dot 2H2O, (NH4)2Cl, and (NH4)2SO4 were expressed in terms of the fundamental driving force of crystallization calculated from the activity of supersaturated solutions. The kinetic parameters were compared with those from the commonly used kinetic expression based on the concentration difference. From the viewpoint of thermodynamics, rate expressions based on the chemical potential difference provide accurate kinetic representation over a broad range of supersaturation. The rates estimated using the expression based on the concentration difference coincide with the true rates of crystallization only in the concentration range of low supersaturation and deviate from the true kinetics as the supersaturation increases.

Kim, Soojin↗
NASA NTRS1973

Stability and noise spectra of relative Loran-C frequency comparisons

Relative comparisons of Loran-C frequency transmissions between the master station of Catanzaro (Simeri Crichi) and the X, Z slave stations of Estartit (Spain) and Lampedusa (Italy) are carrying out by the GG LORSTA monitor station of the Mediterranean Sea Loran-C chain. These comparisons are able to emphasize the relative and, under certain conditions, the absolute rate of the emitting standard frequencies of the slave stations and some relevant statistical properties of the Loran-C Method for frequency transmission and time synchronization. The stability of each Loran-C frequency standard transmission is subject to perturbations, more or less known, due to the propagation medium and other causes. Following the Allan (1966) method for data processing, the performance of the relative rate of frequency of the transmissions of the X, Z slave stations are described calculating the standard deviation of a set of N frequency measurements from its mean averaged during sampling times. This standard deviation is designated as the measure of the stability of the Loran-C frequency transmission.

Proverbio, E.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Measuring Frequency Instability Of A Large Antenna

Frequency instability of antenna under test determined from measurement of phase deviation between outputs of two antennas. Fiber-optic system used to minimize spurious component of frequency instability contributed by propagation of signal from reference antenna to Allan-variance-measuring instrument. Intended primarily to reveal contributions of wind and air-temperature effects on antenna and beam-waveguide structures to overall frequency instabilities of received signals. Technique simpler, less expensive, potentially capable of providing instability data in shorter measuring times, and more precise.

Otoshi, Tom Y.↗