Comparison of GPS derived TEC with the TEC predicted by IRI 2012 model in the southern Equatorial Ionization Anomaly crest within the Eastern Africa region

We have compared the TEC obtained from the IRI-2012 model with the GPS derived TEC data recorded within southern crest of the EIA in the Eastern Africa region using the monthly means of the 5 international quiet days for equinoxes and solstices months for the period of 2012 – 2013. GPS-derived TEC data have been obtained from the Africa array and IGS network of ground based dual-frequency GPS receivers from four stations (Kigali (1.95°S, 30.09°E; Geom. Lat. 11.63°S), Malindi (2.99°S, 40.19°E; Geom. Lat. 12.42°S), Mbarara (0.60°S, 30.74°E; Geom. Lat. 10.22°S) and Nairobi (1.22°S, 36.89°E; Geom. Lat. 10.69°S)) located within the EIA crest in this region. All the three options for topside Ne of IRI-2012 model and ABT-2009 for bottomside thickness have been used to compute the IRI TEC. Also URSI coefficients were considered in this study. These results are compared with the TEC estimated from GPS measurements. Correlation Coefficients between the two sets of data, the Root-Mean Square Errors (RMSE) of the IRI-TEC from the GPS-TEC, and the percentage RMSE of the IRI-TEC from the GPS-TEC have been computed. Our general results show that IRI-2012 model with all three options overestimates the GPS-TEC for all seasons and at all stations, and IRI-2001 overestimates GPS-TEC more compared with other options. IRI-Neq and IRI-01-corr are closely matching in most of the time. The observation also shows that, GPS TEC are underestimated by TEC from IRI model during noon hours, especially during equinoctial months. Further, GPS-TEC values and IRI-TEC values using all the three topside Ne options show very good correlation (above 0.8). On the other hand, the TEC using IRI-Neq and IRI-01- corr had smaller deviations from the GPS-TEC compared to the IRI-2001.     

DME询问信号捕获的设计与实现

捕获询问信号是DME地面设备的一个重要功能组成部分。现役的地面设备中大多使用的捕获单元为分离器件电路设计，其电路复杂，控制难度大，改进与维护成本高。针对这些问题，本文设计采用ADC结合FPGA作为主要功能器件，并通过软件算法完成数字滤波、脉冲峰值提取和半幅点计算，实现询问信号的识别与捕获。不仅大幅减少元器件的使用，缩小设备体积，还可提高扩展性与可靠性。结合机柜验证测试，结果符合设计要求。     

Bayesian coronal seismology

In contrast to the situation in a laboratory, the study of the solar atmosphere has to be pursued without direct access to the physical conditions of interest. Information is therefore incomplete and uncertain and inference methods need to be employed to diagnose the physical conditions and processes. One of such methods, solar atmospheric seismology, makes use of observed and theoretically predicted properties of waves to infer plasma and magnetic field properties. A recent development in solar atmospheric seismology consists in the use of inversion and model comparison methods based on Bayesian analysis. In this paper, the philosophy and methodology of Bayesian analysis are first explained. Then, we provide an account of what has been achieved so far from the application of these techniques to solar atmospheric seismology and a prospect of possible future extensions.     

Reconfigurable fault-tolerant control for supersonic missiles with actuator failures under actuation redundancy

Aircraft undergoing actuator failures into under-actuation have been seldom studied in literature. Aiming at addressing actuator failures of Total Loss of Effectiveness (TLOE) as well as Partial Loss of Effectiveness (PLOE) resulting in different system actuations, reconfigurable Fault-Tolerant Control (FTC) is proposed for supersonic wingless missiles under actuation redundancy. The under-actuated system of TLOE failure patterns is solved by transformation to cascade systems through a ‘shape variable’. Meanwhile, actuator TLOE faults of different unknown failure patterns from proper actuation to under-actuation are accommodated by a reconfigurable adaptive law on a multiple-model basis. The backstepping technique with the Extended State Observer (ESO) method adopted as a basic strategy is applied to an established symmetric coupled missile system with actuator PLOE faults, modeling errors, and external disturbances. Additionally, the nonlinear saturation characteristics of actuators are settled by an auxiliary system with the Nussbaum function technique. The stability of the control system is analyzed and proven through Lyapunov theory. Numerical simulations are implemented in the presences of aerodynamic uncertainties, gust disturbance, and actuator failures. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method with satisfactory tracking performance and actuator fault tolerance capacity.     

A novel framework for liquid propellant engine’s cooling system design by sensitivity analysis based on RSM and multi-objective optimization using PSO

One of the challenges of combustion chamber and nozzle design in a Liquid Propellant Engine (LPE) is to predict the behavior and performance of the cooling system. Therefore, while designing, the optimization of the cooling system is always of great importance. This paper presents the multi-objective optimization of the LPE’s cooling system. To this end, a novel framework has been developed, resulting from the application of the Response Surface Method (RSM) and the correlation coefficients matrix, sensitivity analysis and the The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). based on this method, the input variables, constraints, objective functions, and their surfaces were identified. In terms of multi-optimization algorithms, RSM and PSO are utilized to get global optimum. In conclusion, the methodology capability is to optimize the LPE’s cooling system, 6 percentage increase in total heat transfer and 7 bar decrease cooling system pressure loss, which resulted in a 1.2-seconds increase in the specific impulse of the engine.     

A comparative study of ionospheric IRIEup and ISP assimilative models during some intense and severe geomagnetic storms

Three-dimensional (3-D) electron density matrices, computed in the Mediterranean area by the IRI climatological model and IRIEup and ISP nowcasting models, during some intense and severe geomagnetic-ionospheric storms, were ingested by the ray tracing software tool IONORT, to synthesize quasi-vertical ionograms. IRIEup model was run in different operational modes: (1) assimilating validated autoscaled electron density profiles only from a limited area which, in our case, is the Mediterranean sector (IRIEup_re(V) mode); (2) assimilating electron density profiles from a larger region including several stations spread across Europe: (a) without taking care of validating the autoscaled data in the assimilation process (IRIEup(NV)); (b) validating carefully the autoscaled electron density profiles before their assimilation (IRIEup(V)).The comparative analysis was carried out comparing IRI, IRIEup_re(V), ISP, IRIEup(NV), and IRIEup(V) foF2 synthesized values, with corresponding foF2 measurements autoscaled by ARTIST, and then validated, at the truth sites of Roquetes (40.80°N, 0.50°E, Spain), San Vito (40.60°N, 17.80°E, Italy), Athens (38.00°N, 23.50°E, Greece), and Nicosia, (35.03°N, 33.16°E, Cyprus). The outcomes demonstrate that: (1) IRIEup_re(V), performs better than ISP in the western Mediterranean (around Roquetes); (2) ISP performs slightly better than IRIEup_re(V) in the central part of Mediterranean (around Athens and San Vito); (3) ISP performance is better than the IRIEup_re(V) one in the eastern Mediterranean (around Nicosia); (4) IRIEup(NV) performance is worse than the IRIEup(V) one; (5) in the central Mediterranean area, IRIEup(V) performance is better than the IRIEup_re(V) one, and it is practically the same for the western and eastern sectors.Concerning the overall performance, nowcasting models proved to be considerably more reliable than the climatological IRI model to represent the ionosphere behaviour during geomagnetic-ionospheric storm conditions; ISP and IRIEup(V) provided the best performance, but neither of them has clearly prevailed over the other one.     

Predictive fault-tolerant control of an all-thruster satellite in 6-DOF motion via neural network model updating

The problem of controlling an all-thruster spacecraft in the coupled translational-rotational motion in presence of actuators fault and/or failure is investigated in this paper. The nonlinear model predictive control approach is used because of its ability to predict the future behavior of the system. The fault/failure of the thrusters changes the mapping between the commanded forces to the thrusters and actual force/torque generated by the thruster system. Thus, the basic six degree-of-freedom kinetic equations are separated from this mapping and a set of neural networks are trained off-line to learn the kinetic equations. Then, two neural networks are attached to these trained networks in order to learn the thruster commands to force/torque mappings on-line. Different off-nominal conditions are modeled so that neural networks can detect any failure and fault, including scale factor and misalignment of thrusters. A simple model of the spacecraft relative motion is used in MPC to decrease the computational burden. However, a precise model by the means of orbit propagation including different types of perturbation is utilized to evaluate the usefulness of the proposed approach in actual conditions. The numerical simulation shows that this method can successfully control the all-thruster spacecraft with ON-OFF thrusters in different combinations of thruster fault and/or failure.     

Distributed intelligent self-organized mission planning of multi-UAV for dynamic targets cooperative search-attack

This article studies the cooperative search-attack mission problem with dynamic targets and threats, and presents a Distributed Intelligent Self-Organized Mission Planning (DISOMP) algorithm for multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (multi-UAV). The DISOMP algorithm can be divided into four modules: a search module designed based on the distributed Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm, an attack module designed based on the Parallel Approach (PA) scheme, a threat avoidance module designed based on the Dubins Curve (DC) and a communication module designed for information exchange among the multi-UAV system and the dynamic environment. A series of simulations of multi-UAV searching and attacking the moving targets are carried out, in which the search-attack mission completeness, execution efficiency and system suitability of the DISOMP algorithm are analyzed. The simulation results exhibit that the DISOMP algorithm based on online distributed down-top strategy is characterized by good flexibility, scalability and adaptability, in the dynamic targets searching and attacking problem.     

Direction finding for two-dimensional incoherently distributed sources with Hadamard shift invariance in non-uniform orthogonal arrays

This paper proposes a novel algorithm for Two-Dimensional (2D) central Direction-of-Arrival (DOA) estimation of incoherently distributed sources. In particular, an orthogonal array structure consisting of two Non-uniform Linear Arrays (NLAs) is considered. Based on first-order Taylor series approximation, the Generalized Array Manifold (GAM) model can first be established to separate the central DOAs from the original array manifold. Then, the Hadamard rotational invariance relationships inside the GAMs of two NLAs are identified. With the aid of such relationships, the central elevation and azimuth DOAs can be estimated through a search-free polynomial rooting method. Additionally, a simple parameter pairing of the estimated 2D angular parameters is also accomplished via the Hadamard rotational invariance relationship inside the GAM of the whole array. A secondary but important result is a derivation of closed-form expressions of the Cramer-Rao lower bound. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve a remarkably higher precision at less complexity increment compared with the existing low-complexity methods, which benefits from the larger array aperture of the NLAs. Moreover, it requires no priori information about the angular distributed function.     

GNSS观测数据ZTD建模的质量控制方法

针对目前基于GNSS观测数据的对流层天顶总延迟(ZTD)模型缺乏有效质量控制手段的现状,提出了一套综合考虑数据量、网格分辨率以及模型稳定性的ZTD建模质量控制方法,并采用内华达大地测量实验室(NGL)解算的高空间分辨率GNSS对流层数据,选取了近十年德国及周边区域[47°N-55°N,5°E-15°E]183个测站的实测ZTD,对该方法进行了校验。实验结果表明:在该质量控制方法下建立的新模型精度稳定,平均均方根误差(RMS)为3.4 cm,相对于UNB3m、EGNOS、GPT2w+Saas平均改善了42.4%、35.8%、33.3%。本文提出的质量控制方法有效提升了基于GNSS观测数据的ZTD模型的性能,对于ZTD建模研究具有一定的参考价值。