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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.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1979

Electrotransport purification of thorium under low pressure conditions

It was demonstrated that the ultrapurification of refractory metals by electrotransport refining could best be accomplished in the noncontaminating environment of an orbiting low density materials laboratory such as the Molecular Shield Device. Refining experiments were performed at 2 x 10 to the -12th Torr which resulted in the preparation of small quantities of the World's purest thorium metal. The microgravity occurring in orbit was simulated electromagnetically and shown to be advantageous in eliminating grain-sliding caused by the plastic deformation of the sample at high temperature. The electrotransport sample assembly was tested in several environments including simulated solar irradiation, coldness and darkness and under various pressure conditions. Ultrapure single crystals of alpha thorium were also prepared and characterized. Laboratory electronics for the experiment were developed and a totally automatic control system was used to heat the specimens.

Schmidt, F. A.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Importance of Radiative Transfer Models in Atmospheric Remote Sensing

Radiative transfer models (RTMs) play a significant role in the development of satellite instruments for remote sensing applications. These models simulate electromagnetic radiation's propagation through the atmosphere, providing valuable insights into atmosphere-radiation interactions. RTMs facilitate the optimization of satellite instrument designs, ensuring their ability to measure targeted atmospheric and surface properties accurately. Moreover, they aid in simulating instrument’s measurements under various atmospheric conditions, enabling calibration and validation processes to enhance data quality and reliability. RTMs are extensively used in the Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSE), to generate synthetic observations. By incorporating RTMs into OSSE, we can assess the potential impact of future satellite missions, sensor configurations, and data assimilation techniques. This approach allows for the optimization of satellite instruments and constellations and the evaluation of their influence on weather forecasting, climate monitoring, and other Earth science applications. Another crucial application area of RT models is data assimilation, where they play a fundamental role in combining satellite observations with numerical models to improve atmospheric and environmental predictions. RTMs provide the link between observed radiances and atmospheric parameters, enhancing the accuracy of numerical models and generating more reliable forecasts for weather events, air quality assessments, and climate projections. Moreover, adapting RT models to capture the intricate radiation interactions within the Planetary Boundary Layer will significantly contribute to improving weather forecasting and climate change projections. Current community radiative transfer (RT) models are primarily developed and optimized for operational data assimilation of satellite observations. These models excel at assimilating satellite data into numerical weather prediction models to improve forecast accuracy. However, their focus on data assimilation limits their suitability for other important applications, such as satellite instrument development, OSSE, and Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) studies. Moreover, for PBL studies, RT models need to be adapted to capture the intricate radiation interactions within this crucial atmospheric layer. Developing RT models that can represent the PBL's unique characteristics, such as surface interactions, will contribute significantly to understanding and predicting weather phenomena, air quality, and climate dynamics. This abstract provides a comprehensive overview of the current status of RT models and highlights their limitations concerning satellite instrument development, OSSE, and PBL studies. Addressing these shortcomings requires concerted efforts to enhance RT models' capabilities and expand their applications beyond data assimilation. By investing in research and development to improve these

Isaac Moradi↗
NASA NTRS2009

Integrated Vehicle Health Management Project-Modeling and Simulation for Wireless Sensor Applications

This paper describes the efforts in modeling and simulating electromagnetic transmission and reception as in a wireless sensor network through a realistic wing model for the Integrated Vehicle Health Management project at the Glenn Research Center. A computer model in a standard format for an S-3 Viking aircraft was obtained, converted to a Microwave Studio software format, and scaled to proper dimensions in Microwave Studio. The left wing portion of the model was used with two antenna models, one transmitting and one receiving, to simulate radio frequency transmission through the wing. Transmission and reception results were inconclusive.

Wallett, Thomas M.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Ring-plane traveling-wave tube slow-wave circuit design simulations at V-Band frequencies

The V-Band frequency range of 59-64 GHz is a region of the millimeter-wave spectrum that has been designated for intersatellite communications. As a first effort to develop a high-efficiency V-band TWT, variations on a ring-plane slow-wave circuit were computationally investigated to develop an alternative to the more conventional ferruled coupled-cavity circuit. The ring-plane circuit was chosen because of its high interaction impedance, large beam aperture, and excellent thermal dissipation properties. Despite the high-power capabilities of the ring-plane TWT, disadvantages of low bandwidth and high voltage requirements have until now prevented its acceptance outside the laboratory. In this paper, we use the three-dimensional electromagnetic simulation code MAFIA to investigate methods of increasing the bandwidth and lowering the operating voltage. Dispersion, impedance, and attenuation calculations for various geometric variations and loading distributions were performed. Based on the results of the variations, a circuit termed the finned-ladder TWT slowwave circuit was designed and is compared here to the scaled ring-plane prototype and the conventional ferruled coupled-cavity TWT circuit over the V-band frequency range.

Kory, Carol L.↗
NASA NTRS2026

The Canadian Galactic Emission Mapper: A New 8-10 GHz Telescope To Map the Polarization of the Northern Sky

The Canadian Galactic Emission Mapper (CGEM) radio telescope is mapping polarized Galactic foregrounds from 8-10 GHz to aid in the search for B-modes in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Here we describe the design and early on-sky characterization of the CGEM optics. CGEM employs an on-axis, hat feed optical design that is a body of revolution (BOR) and exhibits excellent intrinsic polarization purity. We describe how we have optimized the optics with a novel framework that can directly minimize simulated intensity to polarized intensity (T → P) leakage in angular power spectrum space. The optimized optics exhibit simulated T → P leakage that is orders of magnitude below anticipated CℓBB for r = 10 −3 when scaled from 8-10 GHz to the CMB observing window near 95 GHz. We go on to describe the mechanical design of the optics, including a novel secondary mirror support made from Astroquartz composite that has low loss, low dielectric constant, and preserves the BOR symmetry of the optics. We then showcase the early on-sky performance of the optics with observations of the Sun and satellites, which probe the beam to 40dB down from the peak. A beam model for the deployed CGEM optics based on electromagnetic simulations is in excellent agreement with the on-sky data.

cosmic microwave background↗
NASA NTRS1991

Advanced electromagnetic methods for aerospace vehicles

The Advanced Helicopter Electromagnetics is centered on issues that advance technology related to helicopter electromagnetics. Progress was made on three major topics: composite materials; precipitation static corona discharge; and antenna technology. In composite materials, the research has focused on the measurements of their electrical properties, and the modeling of material discontinuities and their effect on the radiation pattern of antennas mounted on or near material surfaces. The electrical properties were used to model antenna performance when mounted on composite materials. Since helicopter platforms include several antenna systems at VHF and UHF bands, measuring techniques are being explored that can be used to measure the properties at these bands. The effort on corona discharge and precipitation static was directed toward the development of a new two dimensional Voltage Finite Difference Time Domain computer program. Results indicate the feasibility of using potentials for simulating electromagnetic problems in the cases where potentials become primary sources. In antenna technology the focus was on Polarization Diverse Conformal Microstrip Antennas, Cavity Backed Slot Antennas, and Varactor Tuned Circular Patch Antennas. Numerical codes were developed for the analysis of two probe fed rectangular and circular microstrip patch antennas fed by resistive and reactive power divider networks.

Balanis, Constantine A.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Victim Simulator for Victim Detection Radar

Testing of victim detection radars has traditionally used human subjects who volunteer to be buried in, or climb into a space within, a rubble pile. This is not only uncomfortable, but can be hazardous or impractical when typical disaster scenarios are considered, including fire, mud, or liquid waste. Human subjects are also inconsistent from day to day (i.e., they do not have the same radar properties), so quantitative performance testing is difficult. Finally, testing a multiple-victim scenario is difficult and expensive because of the need for multiple human subjects who must all be coordinated. The solution is an anthropomorphic dummy with dielectric properties that replicate those of a human, and that has motions comparable to human motions for breathing and heartbeat. Two airfilled bladders filled and drained by solenoid valves provide the underlying motion for vinyl bags filled with a dielectric gel with realistic properties. The entire assembly is contained within a neoprene wetsuit serving as a "skin." The solenoids are controlled by a microcontroller, which can generate a variety of heart and breathing patterns, as well as being reprogrammable for more complex activities. Previous electromagnetic simulators or RF phantoms have been oriented towards assessing RF safety, e.g., the measurement of specific absorption rate (SAR) from a cell phone signal, or to provide a calibration target for diagnostic techniques (e.g., MRI). They are optimized for precise dielectric performance, and are typically rigid and immovable. This device is movable and "positionable," and has motion that replicates the small-scale motion of humans. It is soft (much as human tissue is) and has programmable motions.

Lux, James P.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Subcritical dispersive shock waves upstream of planetary bow shocks and at Comet Giacobini-Zinner

The nonlinear evolution of ULF (magnetosonic) waves is studied using electromagnetic simulations. The waves were observed upstream of the planetary bow shocks at Comet Giacobini-Zinner. It is shown that as ULF waves generated by the resonant ion beam instability steepen, their polarization becomes linear. A high-frequency wave packet is generated by the steepening process. The steepened wave has a structure and a behavior similar to a subcritical dispersive shock. It is suggested that Comet Giacobini-Zinner did not have a single bow shock. It is concluded that the comet had a transition region consisting of a series of shocks which were convected by the solar wind.

Omidi, N.↗
NASA NTRS1993

A comparative study of an ABC and an artificial absorber for truncating finite element meshes

The type of mesh termination used in the context of finite element formulations plays a major role on the efficiency and accuracy of the field solution. The performance of an absorbing boundary condition (ABC) and an artificial absorber (a new concept) for terminating the finite element mesh was evaluated. This analysis is done in connection with the problem of scattering by a finite slot array in a thick ground plane. The two approximate mesh truncation schemes are compared with the exact finite element-boundary integral (FEM-BI) method in terms of accuracy and efficiency. It is demonstrated that both approximate truncation schemes yield reasonably accurate results even when the mesh is extended only 0.3 wavelengths away from the array aperture. However, the artificial absorber termination method leads to a substantially more efficient solution. Moreover, it is shown that the FEM-BI method remains quite competitive with the FEM-artificial absorber method when the FFT is used for computing the matrix-vector products in the iterative solution algorithm. These conclusions are indeed surprising and of major importance in electromagnetic simulations based on the finite element method.

Oezdemir, T.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Analysis of a 170-GHz frequency doubler with an array of planar diodes

Analysis of a planar diode multiplier from 85-170 GHz is described. The doubler uses a waveguide mount with two series pairs of diodes in a balanced structure. Because of the difficulties in conventional scale model measurements, numerical electromagnetic simulation based on the finite element method was chosen for the analysis, using a commercial program. To optimize the diode design, the de-embedded diode terminal impedance was studied, as well as the power balance between the diodes. The analysis showed that the matching of the diode impedance to that of the waveguide is quite sensitive to the diode substrate thickness. Thicknesses from 25-100 micron in GaAs were studied as well as 100-micron-thick quartz. The accuracy of the theoretical analysis was verified by careful measurements using a slotted line to determine the diode terminal impedance under large signal pump, for frequencies between 80 and 90 GHz. Good agreement between the measured and simulated diode terminal impedance was observed, although full agreement requires the addition of an empirical loss term. Several options are considered for the source of this loss.

DIODE MULTIPLIER↗
NASA NTRS1995

An Investigation of Multipath Effects on the GPS System During Auto-Rendezvous and Capture

The proposed use of a Cargo Transport Vehicle (CTV) to carry hardware to the Space Station Freedom (SSF) during the construction phase of the SSF project requires remote maneuvering of the CTV. The CTV is not a manned vehicle. Obtaining the relative positions of the CTV and SSF for remote auto-rendezvous and capture (AR&C) scenarios will rely heavily on the Global Positioning System (GPS). The GPS system is expected to guide the CTV up to a distance of 100 to 300 meters from the SSF. At some point within this range, an optical docking system will take over the remote guidance for capture. During any remote guidance by GPS it is possible that significant multipath signals may be caused by large objects in the vicinity of the module being remotely guided. This could alter the position obtained by the GPS system from the actual position. Due to the nature of the GPS signals, it has been estimated that if the difference in distance between the Line of Sight (LOS) path and the multipath is greater than 300 meters, the GPS system is capable of discriminating between the direct signal and the reflected (or multipath) signal. However, if the path difference is less than 300 meters, one must be concerned. This report details the work accomplished by the Electromagnetic Simulations Laboratory at Marquette University over the period December 1993 to May 1995. This work is an investigation of the strength and phase of a multipath signal arriving at the CTV relative to the direct or line of sight (LOS) signal. The signal originates at a GPS satellite in half geo-stationary orbit and takes two paths to the CTV: (1) the direct or LOS path from the GPS satellite to the CTV; and (2) a scattered path from the GPS satellite to the SSF module and then to the CTV. The scattering from a cylinder has been computed using the physical optics approximation for the current. No other approximations or assumptions have been made including no assumptions regarding the far field or Fresnel field approximations. The integrations required to obtain the scattered field have been computed numerically using an N dimensional Romberg integration. The total scattered electric field is then projected onto the RCP component in the direction of propagation only. The direct or line of sight signal is then used to compute the relative strength and phase of the scattered field. The trajectory of the CTV has been parameterized into 4,214 points that are calculated for each of the geometries investigated. The motion of the CTV between points is small enough for the magnitude data (dB down from direct signal) to appear very smooth; however, because of the distances and wavelengths involved, the phase of the scattered field relative to the direct signal varies very rapidly.

Richie, James E.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Experimental Verification of the Use of Metal Filled Via Hole Fences for Crosstalk Control of Microstrip Lines in LTCC Packages

Coupling between microstrip lines in dense RF packages is a common problem that degrades circuit performance. Prior 3D-FEM electromagnetic simulations have shown that metal filled via hole fences between two adjacent microstrip lines actually increases coupling between the lines; however, if the top of the via posts are connected by a metal Strip, coupling is reduced. In this paper, experimental verification of the 3D-FEM simulations Is demonstrated for commercially fabricated LTCC packages.

Ponchak, George E.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Characterization of Plated Via Hole Fences for Isolation Between Stripline Circuits in LTCC Packages

Reduced coupling between adjacent striplines in LTCC packages is commonly accomplished by walls made of plated via holes. In this paper, a 3D-FEM electromagnetic simulation of stripline with filled via fences on both sides is presented. It is shown that the radiation loss of the stripline and the coupling between striplines increases if the fence is placed too close to the stripline.

Ponchak, George E.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Experimental Verification of the Use of Metal Filled Via Hole Fences for Crosstalk Control of Microstrip Lines in LTCC Packages

Coupling between microstrip lines in dense RF packages is a common problem that degrades circuit performance. Prior three-dimensional-finite element method (3-D-FEM) electromagnetic simulations have shown that metal filled via hole fences between two adjacent microstrip lines actually Increases coupling between the lines: however, if the top of the via posts are connected by a metal strip, coupling is reduced. In this paper, experimental verification of the 3-D-FEM simulations is demonstrated for commercially fabricated low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) packages. In addition, measured attenuation of microstrip lines surrounded by the shielding structures is presented and shows that shielding structures do not change the attenuation characteristics of the line.

Ponchak, George E.↗
NASA NTRS2004

A Wide-Bandwidth, Low-Noise SIS Receiver Design for Millimeter and Submillimeter Wavelengths

In principle, millimeter and submillimeter heterodyne receivers using state-of-the-art SIS detectors are capable of extremely large instantaneous bandwidths with noise temperatures within a few Kelvin of the quantum limit. We are applying modem design tools, such as 3D electromagnetic simulators and Caltech's SuperMix SIS analysis package, to develop a new generation of waveguide SIS mixers with very broad RF and IF bandwidths. Our initial design consists of a double-sideband mixer targeted for the 180- 300 GHz band that uses a single SIS junction excited by a full bandwidth, fixed-tuned waveguide probe on a silicon substrate. The IF output band, limited by the MMIC low-noise IF preamplifier, is 6-18 GHz, providing an instantaneous RF bandwidth of 24 GHz (double-sideband). The SIS mixer conversion loss is predicted to be no more than 1-2 dB (single-sideband) with mixer noise temperatures across the band within 10 Kelvin of the quantum limit. The single-sideband receiver noise temperature goal is 70 Kelvin. The wide instantaneous bandwidth and low noise will result in an instrument capable of a variety of important astrophysical observations beyond the capabilities of current instruments. Lab testing of the receiver will begin in the summer of 2002, and a demonstration on the CSO should occur in the spring of 2003.

Sumner, Matthew↗
NASA NTRS2004

Frequency Bandwidth Optimization of Left-Handed Metamaterial

Recently, left-handed metamaterials (LHM s) have been demonstrated with an effective negative index of refraction and with antiparallel group and phase velocities for microwave radiation over a narrow frequency bandwidth. In order to take advantage of these characteristics for practical applications, it will be beneficial to develop LHM s with increased frequency bandwidth response and lower losses. In this paper a commercial three-dimensional electromagnetic simulation code is used to explore the effects of geometry parameter variations on the frequency bandwidth of a LHM at microwave frequencies. Utilizing an optimizing routine in the code, a geometry was generated with a bandwidth more than twice as large as the original geometry.

Chevalier, Christine T.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Digital communication constraints in prior space missions

Digital communication is crucial for space endeavors. Jt transmits scientific and command data between earth stations and the spacecraft crew. It facilitates communications between astronauts, and provides live coverage during all phases of the mission. Digital communications provide ground stations and spacecraft crew precise data on the spacecraft position throughout the entire mission. Lessons learned from prior space missions are valuable for our new lunar and Mars missions set by our president s speech. These data will save our agency time and money, and set course our current developing technologies. Limitations on digital communications equipment pertaining mass, volume, data rate, frequency, antenna type and size, modulation, format, and power in the passed space missions are of particular interest. This activity is in support of ongoing communication architectural studies pertaining to robotic and human lunar exploration. The design capabilities and functionalities will depend on the space and power allocated for digital communication equipment. My contribution will be gathering these data, write a report, and present it to Communications Technology Division Staff. Antenna design is very carefully studied for each mission scenario. Currently, Phased array antennas are being developed for the lunar mission. Phased array antennas use little power, and electronically steer a beam instead of DC motors. There are 615 patches in the phased array antenna. These patches have to be modified to have high yield. 50 patches were created for testing. My part is to assist in the characterization of these patch antennas, and determine whether or not certain modifications to quartz micro-strip patch radiators result in a significant yield to warrant proceeding with repairs to the prototype 19 GHz ferroelectric reflect-array antenna. This work requires learning how to calibrate an automatic network, and mounting and testing antennas in coaxial fixtures. The purpose of this activity is to assist in the set-up of phase noise instrumentation, assist in the process of automated wire bonding, assist in the design and optimization of tunable microwave components, especially phase shifters, based on thin ferroelectric films, and learn how to use commercial electromagnetic simulation software.

Yassine, Nathan K.↗