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At least 559 records · Page 31

Interleaver design for trellis-coded differential 8-PSK modulation with non-coherent detection

The effect of finite interleaver size on bit error rate (BER) performance of coded 8-DPSK is determined by means of computer simulations. The losses evaluated in this way include the SNR degradation due to the timing and frequency errors of the symbol synchronizer and the automatic frequency control (AFC) of the receiver. BER measurements are presented using a conventional 2/3 rate convolutional 8-state trellis-code for typical Rayleigh and Rician fading channels. It is shown that for a Rician channel with a Rician parameter of 7 dB, a Doppler spread of 100 Hz and a data rate of 2400 bps, an interleaver with size 16 x 16 symbols performs nearly as well as a very large interleaver. It is also shown that for very fast Rayleigh channels, the BER-curves flatten out at large SNR.

Edbauer, Franz↗

Design consideration in constructing high performance embedded Knowledge-Based Systems (KBS)

As the hardware trends for artificial intelligence (AI) involve more and more complexity, the process of optimizing the computer system design for a particular problem will also increase in complexity. Space applications of knowledge based systems (KBS) will often require an ability to perform both numerically intensive vector computations and real time symbolic computations. Although parallel machines can theoretically achieve the speeds necessary for most of these problems, if the application itself is not highly parallel, the machine's power cannot be utilized. A scheme is presented which will provide the computer systems engineer with a tool for analyzing machines with various configurations of array, symbolic, scaler, and multiprocessors. High speed networks and interconnections make customized, distributed, intelligent systems feasible for the application of AI in space. The method presented can be used to optimize such AI system configurations and to make comparisons between existing computer systems. It is an open question whether or not, for a given mission requirement, a suitable computer system design can be constructed for any amount of money.

Dalton, Shelly D.↗

Performance analysis of an optimal file transfer protocol for integrated mobile satellite services

A file-transfer protocol based on the selective-repeat automatic-retransmission-request (ARQ) scheme has been developed for the Mobile Satellite Experiment (MSAT-X). In this protocol, each file is divided into packets, which are error-detected and acknowledge individually. A file can be transferred in either the open- or closed-end connection. In the open-end connection, the file is transmitted continuously according to the selective-repeat scheme until all packets are positively acknowledged; in the closed-end connection, each retransmission will initiate its own connection request. The relationship between the packet size and the average end-to-end delay in the mobile fading environment is investigated. The communications channel uses trellis-coded modulation with symbol interleaving, packet replication, and error detection. The packet error performance in such a channel is evaluated by simulation, and the optimal packet size for various operating conditions is derived, using the simulated results. It is shown that for a symbol-energy-to-noise ratio of 12 dB, each file should be divided into packets of length between 256 bits and 512 bits (excluding the overhead) to minimize the average end-to-end delay.

Wang, Charles C.↗

Weighted Integrate-And-Dump Filter

Digital weighted integrate-and-dump filter (WIDF) proposed for detection of weak rectangular-pulse signals corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise. Received signal first low-pass prefiltered, and samples taken at multiple of symbol frequency. Improved performance means lower sampling and processing rates used for given symbol rate, reducing cost of system.

Sadr, Ramin↗

Spaceborne VHSIC multiprocessor system for AI applications

A multiprocessor system, under design for space-station applications, makes use of the latest generation symbolic processor and packaging technology. The result will be a compact, space-qualified system two to three orders of magnitude more powerful than present-day symbolic processing systems.

Lum, Henry, Jr.↗

Garbage collection can be made real-time and verifiable

An efficient means of memory reclamation (also known as Garbage Collection) is essential for Machine Intelligence applications where dynamic storage allocation is desired or required. Solutions for real-time systems must introduce very small processing overhead and must also provide for the verification of the software in order to meet the application time budgets and to verify the correctness of the software. Garbage Collection (GC) techniques are proposed for symbolic processing systems which may simultaneously meet both real-time requirements and verification requirements. The proposed memory reclamation technique takes advantage of the strong points of both the earlier Mark and Sweep technique and the more recent Copy Collection approaches. At least one practical implementation of these new GC techniques has already been developed and tested on a very-high performance symbolic computing system. Complete GC processing of all generated garbage has been demonstrated to require as little as a few milliseconds to perform. This speed enables the effective operation of the GC function as either a background task or as an actual part of the application task itself.

Hino, James H.↗

VLA telemetry performance with concatenated coding for Voyager at Neptune

Current plans for supporting the Voyager encounter at Neptune include the arraying of the Deep Space Network (DSN) antennas at Goldstone, California, with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico. Not designed as a communications antenna, the VLA signal transmission facility suffers a disadvantage in that the received signal is subjected to a gap or blackout period of approximately 1.6 msec once every 5/96 sec control cycle. Previous analyses showed that the VLA data gaps could cause disastrous performance degradation in a VLA stand-alone system and modest degradation when the VLA is arrayed equally with Goldstone. New analysis indicates that the earlier predictions for concatenated code performance were overly pessimistic for most combinations of system parameters, including those of Voyager-VLA. The periodicity of the VLA gap cycle tends to guarantee that all Reed-Solomon codewords will receive an average share of erroneous symbols from the gaps. However, large deterministic fluctuations in the number of gapped symbols from codeword to codeword may occur for certain combinations of code parameters, gap cycle parameters, and data rates. Several mechanisms for causing these fluctuations are identified and analyzed. Even though graceful degradation is predicted for the Voyager-VLA parameters, catastrophic degradation greater than 2 dB can occur for a VLA stand-alone system at certain non-Voyager data rates inside the range of the actual Voyager rates. Thus, it is imperative that all of the Voyager-VLA parameters be very accurately known and precisely controlled.

Dolinar, S. J., Jr.↗

Performance of Lempel-Ziv compressors with deferred innovation

The noiseless data-compression algorithms introduced by Lempel and Ziv (LZ) parse an input data string into successive substrings each consisting of two parts: The citation, which is the longest prefix that has appeared earlier in the input, and the innovation, which is the symbol immediately following the citation. In extremal versions of the LZ algorithm the citation may have begun anywhere in the input; in incremental versions it must have begun at a previous parse position. Originally the citation and the innovation were encoded, either individually or jointly, into an output word to be transmitted or stored. Subsequently, it was speculated that the cost of this encoding may be excessively high because the innovation contributes roughly 1g(A) bits, where A is the size of the input alphabet, regardless of the compressibility of the source. To remedy this excess, it was suggested to store the parsed substring as usual, but encoding for output only the citation, leaving the innovation to be encoded as the first symbol of the next substring. Being thus included in the next substring, the innovation can participate in whatever compression that substring enjoys. This strategy is called deferred innovation. It is exemplified in the algorithm described by Welch and implemented in the C program compress that has widely displaced adaptive Huffman coding (compact) as a UNIX system utility. The excessive expansion is explained, an implicit warning is given against using the deferred innovation compressors on nearly incompressible data.

Cohn, Martin↗

Integration of perception and reasoning in fast neural modules

Artificial neural systems promise to integrate symbolic and sub-symbolic processing to achieve real time control of physical systems. Two potential alternatives exist. In one, neural nets can be used to front-end expert systems. The expert systems, in turn, are developed with varying degrees of parallelism, including their implementation in neural nets. In the other, rule-based reasoning and sensor data can be integrated within a single hybrid neural system. The hybrid system reacts as a unit to provide decisions (problem solutions) based on the simultaneous evaluation of data and rules. Discussed here is a model hybrid system based on the fuzzy cognitive map (FCM). The operation of the model is illustrated with the control of a hypothetical satellite that intelligently alters its attitude in space in response to an intersecting micrometeorite shower.

Fritz, David G.↗

Aeronautical mobile TDMA/MCTDMA system

A multiple carrier Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) system capable of supporting voice, stream data, and packet data traffic between aircraft and ground terminals is presented. Demand assignment permits efficient resource sharing for voice and stream data. The bandwidth efficiency of uncoded A Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (AQPSK) is 1 bps/Hz. High time efficiency (approximately equals 83 percent) is achieved through the use of symbol synchronous TDMA. Demodulation is achieved without loop hang-up while requiring only a 16 symbol preamble each burst. A concatenated coding system provides reliable transmission under multipath conditions.

Magill, Thomas↗

Model-based satellite acquisition and tracking

A model-based optical processor is introduced for the acquisition and tracking of a satellite in close proximity to an imaging sensor of a space robot. The type of satellite is known in advance, and a model of the satellite (which exists from its design) is used in this task. The model base is used to generate multiple smart filters of the various parts of the satellite, which are used in a symbolic multi-filter optical correlator. The output from the correlator is then treated as a symbolic description of the object, which is operated upon by an optical inference processor to determine the position and orientation of the satellite and to track it as a function of time. The knowledge and model base also serves to generate the rules used by the inference machine. The inference machine allows for feedback to optical correlators or feature extractors to locate the individual parts of the satellite and their orientations.

Casasent, David↗

Knowledge-based simulation for aerospace systems

Knowledge-based techniques, which offer many features that are desirable in the simulation and development of aerospace vehicle operations, exhibit many similarities to traditional simulation packages. The eventual solution of these systems' current symbolic processing/numeric processing interface problem will lead to continuous and discrete-event simulation capabilities in a single language, such as TS-PROLOG. Qualitative, totally-symbolic simulation methods are noted to possess several intrinsic characteristics that are especially revelatory of the system being simulated, and capable of insuring that all possible behaviors are considered.

Will, Ralph W.↗

Finite-State Codes

New class of codes with desirable properties constructed from block codes. Finite-state encoder is machine that has finite number of internal states. Receives k parallel information symbols and transmits n parallel code symbols at each clock pulse. Finite-state codes include both block and convolutional codes. Theory of finite-state codes used to study properties of error-correcting codes in general and to design new codes to various specifications.

Pollara, F.↗

Error control techniques for satellite and space communications

Two aspects of the work for NASA are examined: the construction of multi-dimensional phase modulation trellis codes and a performance analysis of these codes. A complete list is contained of all the best trellis codes for use with phase modulation. LxMPSK signal constellations are included for M = 4, 8, and 16 and L = 1, 2, 3, and 4. Spectral efficiencies range from 1 bit/channel symbol (equivalent to rate 1/2 coded QPSK) to 3.75 bits/channel symbol (equivalent to 15/16 coded 16-PSK). The parity check polynomials, rotational invariance properties, free distance, path multiplicities, and coding gains are given for all codes. These codes are considered to be the best candidates for implementation of a high speed decoder for satellite transmission. The design of a hardware decoder for one of these codes, viz., the 16-state 3x8-PSK code with free distance 4.0 and coding gain 3.75 dB is discussed. An exhaustive simulation study of the multi-dimensional phase modulation trellis codes is contained. This study was motivated by the fact that coding gains quoted for almost all codes found in literature are in fact only asymptotic coding gains, i.e., the coding gain at very high signal to noise ratios (SNRs) or very low BER. These asymptotic coding gains can be obtained directly from a knowledge of the free distance of the code. On the other hand, real coding gains at BERs in the range of 10(exp -2) to 10(exp -6), where these codes are most likely to operate in a concatenated system, must be done by simulation.

Costello, Daniel J., Jr.↗

VLSI single-chip (255,223) Reed-Solomon encoder with interleaver

The invention relates to a concatenated Reed-Solomon/convolutional encoding system consisting of a Reed-Solomon outer code and a convolutional inner code for downlink telemetry in space missions, and more particularly to a Reed-Solomon encoder with programmable interleaving of the information symbols and code correction symbols to combat error bursts in the Viterbi decoder.

Hsu, In-Shek↗

A novel multireceiver communications system configuration based on optimal estimation theory

A multireceiver configuration for the purpose of carrier arraying and/or signal arraying is presented. Such a problem arises for example, in the NASA Deep Space Network where the same data-modulated signal from a spacecraft is received by a number of geographically separated antennas and the data detection must be efficiently performed on the basis of the various received signals. The proposed configuration is arrived at by formulating the carrier and/or signal arraying problem as an optimal estimation problem. Two specific solutions are proposed. The first solution is to simultaneously and optimally estimate the various phase processes received at different receivers with coupled phase locked loops (PLLs) wherein the individual PLLs acquire and track their respective receivers' phase processes, but are aided by each other in an optimal manner. However, when the phase processes are relatively weakly correlated, and for the case of relatively high values of symbol energy-to-noise spectral density ratio, a novel configuration for combining the data modulated, loop-output signals is proposed. The scheme can be extended to the case of low symbol energy-to-noise case by performing the combining/detection process over a multisymbol period. Such a configuration results in the minimization of the effective radio loss at the combiner output, and thus a maximization of energy per bit to noise-power spectral density ration is achieved.

Kumar, R.↗

An engineering approach to automatic programming

An exploratory study of the automatic generation and optimization of symbolic programs using DECOM - a prototypical requirement specification model implemented in pure LISP was undertaken. It was concluded, on the basis of this study, that symbolic processing languages such as LISP can support a style of programming based upon formal transformation and dependent upon the expression of constraints in an object-oriented environment. Such languages can represent all aspects of the software generation process (including heuristic algorithms for effecting parallel search) as dynamic processes since data and program are represented in a uniform format.

Rubin, Stuart H.↗

VIP: A knowledge-based design aid for the engineering of space systems

The Vehicles Implementation Project (VIP), a knowledge-based design aid for the engineering of space systems is described. VIP combines qualitative knowledge in the form of rules, quantitative knowledge in the form of equations, and other mathematical modeling tools. The system allows users rapidly to develop and experiment with models of spacecraft system designs. As information becomes available to the system, appropriate equations are solved symbolically and the results are displayed. Users may browse through the system, observing dependencies and the effects of altering specific parameters. The system can also suggest approaches to the derivation of specific parameter values. In addition to providing a tool for the development of specific designs, VIP aims at increasing the user's understanding of the design process. Users may rapidly examine the sensitivity of a given parameter to others in the system and perform tradeoffs or optimizations of specific parameters. A second major goal of VIP is to integrate the existing corporate knowledge base of models and rules into a central, symbolic form.

Lewis, Steven M.↗