New Technology for Shallow Water Hydrographic Surveys

The United States Office of Coast Survey is developing technology for shallow water hydrographic surveys in order to increase the efficiency with which hydrographic data are acquired and to improve the likelihood that all potential dangers to navigation are detected in the course of a hydrographic survey. Three areas of technology hold the greatest promise for meeting those goals: Airborne Lidar Hydrography (ALH), Shallow Water Multibeam Sonars (SWMB), and digital side scan sonar, especially the Coast Survey’s new High Speed, High Resolution Side Scan Sonar (HSHRSSS). The Coast Survey expects that all its ALH surveys will be outsourced to private sector contractors, and that its SWMB and side scan sonar surveys will be accomplished by both NOAA survey vessels and by private sector contractors. This diversity of sources for survey data influences the strategy for managing these new technologies

Controlling a mobile robot with a biological brain

The intelligent controlling mechanism of a typical mobile robot is usually a computer system. Some recent research is ongoing in which biological neurons are being cultured and trained to act as the brain of an interactive real world robot�thereby either completely replacing, or operating in a cooperative fashion with, a computer system. Studying such hybrid systems can provide distinct insights into the operation of biological neural structures, and therefore, such research has immediate medical implications as well as enormous potential in robotics. The main aim of the research is to assess the computational and learning capacity of dissociated cultured neuronal networks. A hybrid system incorporating closed-loop control of a mobile robot by a dissociated culture of neurons has been created. The system is flexible and allows for closed-loop operation, either with hardware robot or its software simulation. The paper provides an overview of the problem area, gives an idea of the breadth of present ongoing research, establises a new system architecture and, as an example, reports on the results of conducted experiments with real-life robots

Non-cooperative code design in radar networks: a game-theoretic approach

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Waveform Design via Convex Optimization

In this thesis, we propose some original examples of radar waveform design via convex optimization theory. After an initial section introducing some basic concepts about waveform design (chapter 2), we analyze in detail code design for a stand-alone radar in case of temporal (chapter 3) or spatial-temporal processing (chapter 4), and for a networked radar with constraints on the induced interference (chapter 5). Finally, some concluding remarks are presented (chapter 6)

Multiuser Coding and Signal Processing in a Low Power Sensor Network

Backscatter communication system is a wireless communication system that is used by both academic community and industry circles in recent years. This communication system only requires ultra-low power usage and simple design of the sensors. This project is using backscatter communication system to transmit data with backscatter tags. The method we used is semi-passive backscatter communication. This project focuses on transmitting signals with multiple sensors so there is a problem about distinguishing the signal reflected by different nodes. We modulated the transmitting digital signal with Walsh function to solve the problem of separating the signals between different nodes. By using spread sequences we have interferences between different signals from each node and also from the bouncing and direct path signals. We want to estimate the channel between the sensors to suppress the effect of the interferences. In addition, to make the system more practical with multiple usages and applications, we made the receiver and the illuminator on a moving platform. With this dynamic system it is important to deal with the interference of bouncing signals by analyzing the Doppler shift of received signal. With these approaches the purpose of this project is having the reader of the sensor network to communicate with multiple nodes with backscatter communication. This system can be used on variety of applications such as environmental sensing, signal recording and data communicating with less power usage compared with traditional communication systems. Advisor: Andrew Harm