A New Class of Polyphase Pulse Compression Codes and Techniques

A new class of symmetric radar pulse compression polyphase codes is introduced which is compatible with digital signal processing. These codes share many of the useful properties of the Frank polyphase code. In contrast with the Frank code, the new codes are not subject to mainlobe to sidelobe ratio degradation caused by bandlimiting prior to sampling and digital pulse compression. It is shown that bandlimiting the new codes prior to pulse compression acts as a waveform amplitude weighting which has the effect of increasing the mainlobe to sidelobe ratios.     

Education and Public Outreach for Nasa’s Deep Impact Mission

The Deep Impact mission’s Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) program brings the principles of physics relating to the properties of matter, motions and forces and transfer of energy to school-aged and public audiences. Materials and information on the project web site convey the excitement of the mission, the principles of the process of scientific inquiry and science in a personal and social perspective. Members of the E/PO team and project scientists and engineers, share their experiences in public presentations and via interviews on the web. Programs and opportunities to observe the comet before, during and after impact contribute scientific data to the mission and engage audiences in the mission, which is truly an experiment.     

The Juno Gravity Science Instrument

The Juno mission’s primary science objectives include the investigation of Jupiter interior structure via the determination of its gravitational field. Juno will provide more accurate determination of Jupiter’s gravity harmonics that will provide new constraints on interior structure models. Juno will also measure the gravitational response from tides raised on Jupiter by Galilean satellites. This is accomplished by utilizing Gravity Science instrumentation to support measurements of the Doppler shift of the Juno radio signal by NASA’s Deep Space Network at two radio frequencies. The Doppler data measure the changes in the spacecraft velocity in the direction to Earth caused by the Jupiter gravity field. Doppler measurements at X-band (\(\sim 8\) GHz) are supported by the spacecraft telecommunications subsystem for command and telemetry and are used for spacecraft navigation as well as Gravity Science. The spacecraft also includes a Ka-band (\(\sim 32\) GHz) translator and amplifier specifically for the Gravity Science investigation contributed by the Italian Space Agency. The use of two radio frequencies allows for improved accuracy by removal of noise due to charged particles along the radio signal path.     

Doppler Properties of Polyphase Coded Pulse Compression Waveforms

Doppler properties of the Frank polyphase code and the recently derived P1, P2, P3, and P4 polyphase codes are investigated and compared. An approximate 4 dB cyclic variation of the peak compressed signal is shown to occur as the Doppler frequency increases. The troughs in the peak-signal response occur whenever the total phase shift across the uncompressed pulse, due to Doppler, is an odd multiple of ? radians. It is shown that while the P3 and P4 codes have larger zero-Doppler peak sidelobes than the other codes, the P3 and P4 codes degrade less as the Doppler frequency increases. Also, the effects of amplitude weighting and receiver bandlimiting for both zero and nonzero Doppler are investigated.     

Range-Doppler Imaging of Rotating Objects

During the integration time required to obtain fine Dopplerfrequency resolution in a range-Doppler imaging radar, a point on a rotating object may move through several range and Doppler resolution cells and produce a smeared image. This motion can be compensated by storing the appropriately processed return pulse, and the angular coordinates are determined by the angular coordinates of the radar antenna. The resulting stored data represents the three-dimensional Fourier transform of the object reflectivity density, and hence can be processed by an inverse Fourier transformation. Also included is an analysis of the three-dimensional radar/object geometry with separate source and receiver locations. The effects of various system aberrations are investigated and experimental results from a microwave test range which demonstrate the image improvement are presented.     

Magnetospheric plasma sources and losses: future directions

Space Science Reviews -     

THEMIS Operations

THEMIS—a five-spacecraft constellation to study magnetospheric events leading to auroral outbursts—launched on February 17, 2007. All aspects of operations are conducted at the Mission Operations Center at the University of California at Berkeley. Activities of the multi-mission operations team include mission and science operations, flight dynamics and ground station operations. Communications with the constellation are primarily established via the Berkeley Ground Station, while NASA’s Ground Network provides secondary pass coverage. In addition, NASA’s Space Network supports maneuver operations near perigee. Following a successful launch campaign, the operations team performed on-orbit probe bus and instrument check-out and commissioning tasks, and placed the constellation initially into a coast phase orbit configuration to control orbit dispersion and conduct initial science operations during the summer of 2007. Mission orbit placement was completed in the fall of 2007, in time for the first winter observing season in the Earth’s magnetospheric tail. Over the course of the first 18 months of on-orbit constellation operations, procedures for instrument configuration, science data acquisition and navigation were refined, and software systems were enhanced. Overall, the implemented ground systems at the Mission Operations Center proved to be very successful and completely adequate to support reliable and efficient constellation operations. A high degree of systems automation is employed to support lights-out operations during off-hours.     

遥操作机器人神经网络Smith预估控制(英文)

针对遥操作机器人通讯通道中存在的时延 ,提出了一种神经网络 Smith预估控制方法。控制系统适合于时延不变但未知的情况。控制系统包括主控制器和从系统两部分。从系统采用动态神经网络辨识机器人的动态模型 ,神经网络权重在线学习 ,用神经网络的输出对非线性系统进行局部非线性补偿 ,将非线性系统线性化。主系统针对线性化的从系统 ,采用 Smith预估控制解决时延问题并保证系统的性能品质。通过李雅普诺夫稳定理论保证了时延控制系统的稳定性。对两关节机器人的仿真结果说明了该方法的有效性。