Pulsations of the R Coronae Borealis stars

The radial pulsations of very luminous, low-mass models (L/M 10⁴, solar units), which are possible representatives of the R CrB stars, have been examined. These pulsations are extremely nonadiabatic. We find that there are in some cases at least one extra (strange) mode which makes interpretation difficult. The blue instability edges are also peculiar, in that there is an abrupt excursion of the blue edge to the blue for L/M sufficiently large. The range of periods of the model encompasses observed periods of the Cepheid-like pulsations of actual R CrB stars.     

Track-While-Scan Algorithm in a Clutter Environment

A track-while scan (TWS) algorithm is developed for targets in a clutter environment. The problem has been studied using only the position measurements [1, 5-8], but the simulation results have not been satisfactory. Modern processing techniques (FFT processor) ) in air traffic control and surveillance radar receivers provide both position and radial velocity. The radial velocity measurement may be conveniently used in the target-track correlation process, which will reduce the association ambiguity in the clutter environment. t. In the clear environment the algorithm using the position and radial velocity measurements has been treated in [3, 4]. A TWS algorithm, using both position and radial velocity measurements for targets in a clutter environment, is presented here. The algorithm obtained is nonlinear and adaptive. In order to evaluate the improvement due to radial velocity measurement a simulation has been performed on a digital computer. The algorithm was run with and without radial velocity measurements to compare its performances. An improvement was noted especially when the target path included an accelerated portion.     

Optical Simulation of Radar Ambiguities

Coherent optical systems, because of their basic similarity to coherent radar systems, can be used to simulate many of the characteristics of the latter. This paper discusses the use of a coherent optical system for the simulation of the range and azimuth ambiguities that sometimes occur in radar systems. The optical configurations for implementing these simulations are described in detail, and extensive experimental results are presented.     

Some early results of the keV plasma experiment on GEOS-1

Some preliminary new results are presented of the keV plasma experiment on GEOS-1. Electrons and ions have been observed to stream along the magnetic field lines in the dayside magnetosphere from the ionospheric side of the satellite towards the equatorial plane during magnetic storms, with streaming velocities corresponding to a kinetic energy of the order of a keV. The opposite streaming velocity has also been seen, but primarily in the ions only and with a smaller flux ratio for the two opposite directions along the field lines. The transition between the two opposite streaming directions, as seen by the satellite, has been found to occur even in a fraction of a second.In magnetic storm conditions azimuthal asymmetries in ion fluxes corresponding to electric field intensities of several tens of millivolts per meter have been observed.     

Simplified analysis of PWM converters using model of PWM switch.II. Discontinuous conduction mode

For pt.I see ibid., vol.26, no.3, p.490-6 (1990). According to the method of state-space averaging, when a pulsewidth modulation (PWM) converter enters discontinuous conduction mode (DCM), the inductor current state is lost from the average model of the converter. It is shown that there is neither theoretical nor experimental justification for the disappearance of the inductor state as claimed by the method of state-space averaging. For example, when the model of the PWM switch in DCM is substituted in the buck, boost, or buck-boost converter while the inductor is left intact, the average model has two poles: the first pole f_p1 agrees with the single pole of state-space averaging, while the second pole f_p2 occurs in the range f_p2⩾F_s/π. It is shown that the right-half plane zeros present in the control-to-output transfer functions of the boost, buck-boost, and Cuk converters in continuous conduction mode are also present in discontinuous conduction mode     

Bounds on Elevation Error Estimates of a Target in Multipath

The Cramer-Rao bound for an unbiased estimate of the elevation angle of a target in the presence of multipath is calculated for the symmetric (target and image symmetric about the elevation symmetry plane of antenna) and nonsymmetric cases for an antenna consisting of 21 elements. These bounds are compared to the maximum likelihood estimates and it is found that the rms error of the maximum likelihood estimate (which has a bias) is below the Cramer-Rao bound for unbiased estimates.     

False alarm control using Doppler estimation

A technique which uses maximum-likelihood estimates (MLEs) of target Doppler and target amplitude is developed for rejecting clutter residues. Multiple estimates are made and consistency checks are applied to the estimates. Simulation results indicate that for large clutter-to-noise ratios (C/N⩾55 dB) the probability of false alarm from clutter residues is reduced from 1.0 to below 0.01     

Efficient algorithms for finding the K best paths througha trellis

A set of algorithms is presented for finding the best set of K mutually exclusive paths through a trellis of N nodes, with worst-case computation time bounded by N³log n for a fixed-precision computation. The algorithms are based on a transformation of the K-path trellis problem into an equivalent minimum-cost network flow (MCNF) problem. The approach allows the application of efficient MCNF algorithms, which can obtain optimal solutions orders of magnitude faster than the algorithm proposed by J.K. Wolf et al. (1989). The resulting algorithms extend the practicality of the trellis formulation (in terms of required computations) to multiobject tracking problems with much larger numbers of targets and false alarms. A response by Wolf et al. is included