Surveillance through walls and other opaque materials

The Department of Defense (DoD) has funded a dazzling array of “high tech” solutions for many of the problems facing our military forces. Many of these “solutions” have been effective for long range mass destruction but have not been applicable for the close-in hand-to-hand combat that is on our streets. Our goal at the Hughes AET Center has been to convert “high tech” DoD capabilities into cost effective tools to help law enforcement agencies do their jobs better. Surveillance systems presently used by law enforcement officers make extensive use of television, infrared and other Line-of-Sight (LOS) surveillance systems. However, these systems cannot tell what is happening on the other side of a wall, behind bushes, around the corner, in the dark or through a dense fog. A new sensor has been developed that uses technology developed by the DoD for missile warhead fuzing. This small, light weight, low power “Radar” is based upon the fact that radio waves can penetrate nonmetallic materials. This new surveillance capability can help provide information about what is in a wall, ceiling or floor or on the other side of a door or concrete wall. Real field scenarios are used in this paper to show how this radar works and how field users can tell if someone is moving inside a building, even from remote locations     

Radar target classification of commercial aircraft

With the increased availability of coherent wideband radars there has been a renewed interest in radar target recognition. A large bandwidth gives high resolution in range which means target discrimination may be possible. Coherence makes cross-range resolution and radar images possible. Some of the problems of classifying high resolution range profiles (HRRPs) are examined and simple preprocessing techniques which may aid subsequent target classification are investigated. These techniques are applied to HRRP data acquired at a local airport using the Microwave Radar Division (MRD) mobile radar facility It is found that Boeing 727 and Boeing 737 aircraft can be reliably distinguished over a range of aspect angles. This augers well for future target classification studies using HRRPs     

Tapped-inductor filter assisted soft-switching PWM DC-DC power converter

A novel high-frequency transformer linked full-bridge type soft-switching phase-shift pulsewidth modulated (PWM) controlled dc-dc power converter is presented, which can be used as a power conditioner for small-scale photovoltaic and fuel cell power generation systems as well as isolated boost dc-dc power converter for automotive ac power supply. In these applications with low-voltage large-current sources, the full-bridge circuit is the most attractive topology due to the possibility of using low-voltage high-performance metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) and achieving high efficiency of the dc-dc power converter. A tapped-inductor filter including the freewheeling diode is newly implemented in the output stage of the full-bridge phase-shift PWM dc-dc converter to achieve soft-switching operation for the wide load variation range. Moreover, in the proposed converter circuit, the circulating current is effectively minimized without using additional resonant circuit and auxiliary power switching devices. The practical effectiveness of the proposed soft-switching dc-dc power converter was verified in laboratory level experiment with 1 kW 100 kHz breadboard setup using power MOSFETs. Actual efficiency of 94-97% was obtained for the wide duty cycle and load variation ranges.     

Late Stages of Stellar Evolution

A large fraction of ISO observing time was used to study the late stages of stellar evolution. Many molecular and solid state features, including crystalline silicates and the rotational lines of water vapour, were detected for the first time in the spectra of (post-)Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars. Their analysis has greatly improved our knowledge of stellar atmospheres and circumstellar environments. A surprising number of objects, particularly young planetary nebulae with Wolf-Rayet (WR) central stars, were found to exhibit emission features in their ISO spectra that are characteristic of both oxygen-rich and carbon-rich dust species, while far-IR observations of the PDR around NGC 7027 led to the first detections of the rotational line spectra of CH and CH⁺. Based on observations with ISO, an ESA project with instruments funded by ESA Member States (especially the PI countries: France, Germany, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom), and with the participation of ISAS and NASA.     

Fiber-optic radar calibration

A simple fiber-optic radar calibration target is described. Its operation is based on a wideband fiber, a laser transmitter that is directly modulated by the down-converted radar signal and an optical diode receiver recovering said signal. Further up-conversion having a common local oscillator with the first mixer ensures fidelity of the calibration return. Measured useful bandwidth exceeds 200 MHz and practically any radar RF frequency can be handled when suitable mixers are employed. Amplifiers can be added to the down-converted path as desired to compensate for the fiber loss. Modulation and LO sweep provide easy ways of introducing artificial fluctuations and Doppler frequencies. Particularly pulsed radars are readily tested with the proposed scheme as no restrictions are posed by the radar's TR-switch delays.     

Analysis of the Integrity of the Microwave Landing System (MLS) Data Eu nctions

The microwave landing system (MLS) transmits angle, data, andrange information for use by airborne receivers. In this paper, theintegrity of the data functions is analyzed in terms of the probabilityof undetected errors remaining in the data. The data format andintegrity requirements were derived from the MLS standards andguidance material defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Results show that the performancerequirements can be met by: 1) averaging the received data bits ofseveral samples of the same word using a majority voting;2) reducing the bit error rate at the output of the receiver'sdecoder; and 3) a combination of the above techniques.     

Detection of microlesions induced by heavy ions using liposomes filled with fluorescent dye.

In cells irradiation by heavy ions has been hypothesized to produce microlesions, regions of local damage. In cell membranes this damage is thought to manifest itself in the form of holes. The primary evidence for microlesions comes from morphological studies of cell membranes, but this evidence is still controversial, especially since holes also have been observed in membranes of normal, nonirradiated, cells. However, it is possible that damage not associated with histologically discernable disruptions may still occur. In order to resolve this issue, we developed a system for detecting microlesions based on liposomes filled with fluorescent dye. We hypothesized that if microlesions form in these liposomes as the result of irradiation, then the entrapped dye will leak out into the surrounding medium in a measurable way. Polypropylene vials containing suspensions of vesicles composed of either dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine, or a combination of egg phosphatidylcholine and cholesterol were irradiated at the Brookhaven National Laboratory using 56Fe ions at 1 GeV/amu. In several cases we obtained a significant loss of the entrapped dye above the background level. Our results suggest that holes may form in liposomes as the result of heavy ion irradiation, and that these holes are large enough to allow leakage of cell internal contents that are at least as large as a 1 nm diameter calcein molecule.     

Effects of spaceflight (STS-87) on tropisms and plastid positioning in protonemata of the moss Ceratodon purpureus.

Apical cells of moss protonemata represent a single-celled system that perceives and reacts to light (positive and negative phototropism) and to gravity (negative gravitropism). Phototropism completely overrides gravitropism when apical cells are laterally irradiated with relatively high red light intensities, but below a defined light intensity threshold gravitropism competes with the phototropic reaction. A 16 day-long exposure to microgravity conditions demonstrated that gravitropism is allowed when protonemata are laterally illuminated with light intensities below 140 nmol m-2s-1. Protonemata that were grown in darkness in microgravity expressed an endogenous tendency to grow in arcs so that the overall culture morphology resembled a clockwise spiral. However this phenomenon only was observed in cultures that had reached a critical age and/or size. Organelle positioning in dark-grown apical cells was significantly altered in microgravity. Gravisensing most likely involves the sedimentation of starch-filled amyloplasts in a well-defined area of the tip cell. Amyloplasts that at 1-g are sedimented were clustered at the apical part of the sedimentation zone in microgravity. Clustering observed in microgravity or during clino-rotation significantly differs from sedimentation-induced plastid aggregations after inversion of tip cells at 1-g.     

The influence of dose, dose-rate and particle fragmentation on cataract induction by energetic iron ions.

Because activities in space necessarily involve chronic exposure to a heterogeneous charged particle radiation field it is important to assess the influence of dose-rate and the possible modulating role of heavy particle fragmentation on biological systems. Using the well-studied cataract model, mice were exposed to plateau 600 MeV/amu 56Fe ions either as acute or fractionated exposures at total doses of 5 - 504 cGy. Additional groups of mice received 20, 360 and 504 cGy behind 50 mm of polyethylene, which simulates body shielding. The reference radiation consisted of 60Co gamma radiation. The animals were examined by slit lamp biomicroscopy over their three year life spans. In accordance with our previous observations with heavy particles, the cataractogenic potential of the 600 MeV/amu 56Fe ions was greater than for low-LET radiation and increased with decreasing dose relative to gamma-rays. Fractionation of a given dose of 56Fe ions did not reduce the cataractogenicity of the radiation compared to the acute regimen. Fragmentation of the beam in the polyethylene did not alter the cataractotoxicity of the ions, either when administered singly or in fractions.