Raman anemometry, a method for component-selective velocity measurements of particles in a flow

An anemometer for the measurement of the velocity of particles of different substances in a flow, separate and apart from that of the flow itself, is described. The substances are distinguished by Raman scattering. The velocity is obtained by relating the autocorrelated scattering signal to the known laser beam profile

ISR spectra simulations with electron-ion Coulomb collisions

Incoherent scatter radars (ISR) rely on Thomson scattering of very high frequency or ultrahigh frequency radio waves off electrons in the ionosphere and measure the backscattered power spectra in order to estimate altitude profiles of plasma density, electron temperature, ion temperature, and ion drift speed. These spectra result from the collective behavior of coupled ion and electron dynamics, and, for most cases, existing theories predict these well. However, when the radar points nearly perpendicular to the Earth's magnetic field, the motion of the plasma across the field lines becomes complex and Coulomb collisions between electrons and ions become important in interpreting ISR measurements. This paper presents the first fully kinetic, self‐consistent, particle‐in‐cell simulations of ISR spectra with electron‐ion Coulomb collisions. We implement a grid‐based Coulomb collision algorithm in the Electrostatic Parallel Particle‐in‐Cell simulator and obtain ISR spectra from simulations both with and without collisions. For radar directions greater than 5° away from perpendicular to the magnetic field, both sets of simulations match collisionless ISR theory well. For angles between 3° and 5°, the collisional simulation is well described by a simplified Brownian motion collision process. At angles less than 3° away from perpendicular the Brownian motion model fails, and the collisional simulation qualitatively agrees with previous single particle simulations. For radar directions exactly perpendicular to the magnetic field the simulated collisional spectra match those from the Brownian motion collision theory, in agreement with previous single particle simulations.This work was supported by NASA grants NNX14AI13G and NNX16AB80G and NSF grant PHY-1500439. This work used the XSEDE and TACC computational facilities, supported by NSF grant ACI-1053575. The work by Alex Fletcher was supported by NSF-AGS Postdoctoral Research Fellowship award 1433536 while at the Center for Space Physics, Boston University. Simulation produced data are archived at TACC and are available upon request. We thank John Swoboda of MIT Haystack Observatory for his suggestions on processing the simulated ISR spectra. (NNX14AI13G - NASA; NNX16AB80G - NASA; PHY-1500439 - NSF; ACI-1053575 - NSF; 1433536 - NSF-AGS Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Center for Space Physics, Boston University)First author draf

The White Dwarf -- White Dwarf galactic background in the LISA data

LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) is a proposed space mission, which will use coherent laser beams exchanged between three remote spacecraft to detect and study low-frequency cosmic gravitational radiation. In the low-part of its frequency band, the LISA strain sensitivity will be dominated by the incoherent superposition of hundreds of millions of gravitational wave signals radiated by inspiraling white-dwarf binaries present in our own galaxy. In order to estimate the magnitude of the LISA response to this background, we have simulated a synthesized population that recently appeared in the literature. We find the amplitude of the galactic white-dwarf binary background in the LISA data to be modulated in time, reaching a minimum equal to about twice that of the LISA noise for a period of about two months around the time when the Sun-LISA direction is roughly oriented towards the Autumn equinox. Since the galactic white-dwarfs background will be observed by LISA not as a stationary but rather as a cyclostationary random process with a period of one year, we summarize the theory of cyclostationary random processes, present the corresponding generalized spectral method needed to characterize such process, and make a comparison between our analytic results and those obtained by applying our method to the simulated data. We find that, by measuring the generalized spectral components of the white-dwarf background, LISA will be able to infer properties of the distribution of the white-dwarfs binary systems present in our Galaxy.Comment: 36 pages, 15 figure

Wideband Channel Estimation and Prediction in Single-Carrier Wireless Systems

Abstract—In this contribution wideband channel estimation and prediction designed for single-carrier wideband wireless communications systems are investigated. Specifically, the single-carrier wideband pilot signal received by the receiver is first converted to the frequency-domain. Then, the envelope of the channel transfer function (CTF) is estimated in the frequency-domain, in order to reduce the effects of background noise on the channel prediction step to be invoked. Finally, channel prediction is carried out based on the estimated CTF in the frequency-domain, where a Kalman filter assisted long-range channel prediction algorithm is employed. Our simulation results show that for a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) value the proposed frequency-domain based wideband channel estimator is capable of efficiently mitigating the effects of the background noise, hence enhancing the performance of wideband channel prediction

Optical and radio variability of the BL Lac object AO 0235+16: a possible 5-6 year periodicity

New optical and radio data on the BL Lacertae object AO 0235+16 have been collected in the last four years by a wide international collaboration, which confirm the intense activity of this source. The optical data also include the results of the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT) first-light campaign organized in November 1997. The optical spectrum is observed to basically steepen when the source gets fainter. We have investigated the existence of typical variability time scales and of possible correlations between the optical and radio emissions by means of visual inspection, Discrete Correlation Function analysis, and Discrete Fourier Transform technique. The major radio outbursts are found to repeat quasi-regularly with a periodicity of about 5.7 years; this period is also in agreement with the occurrence of some of the major optical outbursts, but not all of them.Comment: to be published in A&

Digital spectral analysis of bistatic-radar echoes from Explorer 35

Bistatic radar echoes from Explorer 35 using 150 foot dish antenn