Fast Chirped Signals for a TDMA Ultrasonic Indoor Positioning System

In this paper, a new concept for ultrasonic indoor positioning based on instantaneous frequency of ultrasonic signals is presented. Nonlinear phase characteristics of ultrasonic transducers introduce a frequency deviation in ultrasonic signals. By sweeping at very fast rates, a large spike in the deviation is introduced. The artefacts observable in instantaneous frequency estimations are highly localized and present an opportunity for accurate frequency detection. In order to be useful, the artefacts need to take place within the pulse and have sufficient magnitude for accurate processing. The system consists of a transducer transmitter and receiver pair, which have a center frequency of 40kHz and a bandwidth of 460Hz. In order to incorporate more transmitters, a time-division multiple access (TDMA) scheme is applied to ensure orthogonality of signals. The concept includes four ultrasonic transmitters and a single receiver, which can uniquely identify each transmitter by a distinct signal sweep. Linear chirp signals are used to form narrow pulses and ensure no interference in the TDMA scheme. The received signal is amplified and passed through a phase-locked loop (PLL) to detect the chirp signals. Accurate instantaneous frequency detection can be done on the voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) of the PLL, which has a narrower bandwidth than the overall signal sweep. The instantaneous frequency estimation methods are largely explored in this work and consider two methods: the Hilbert transform and a zero-crossings method. This work highlights some of the advantages and disadvantages of both methods. Time of flight (ToF) in this system can ultimately be obtained by considering the instantaneous frequency estimations and the time for one particular frequency to be transmitted and received

Modern Digital Chirp Receiver: Theory, Design and System Integration

Chirp signals can achieve a high range resolution without sacrificing SNR or maximum range, making them a strong candidate for use in radar and sonar applications. Chirp signals are also power efficient and resistant to interference, making them well suited for communication applications as well. The proposed digital high chirp rate receivers will showcase the use of digital instantaneous frequency measurement (IFM) devices for high chirp rate measurement. The receivers are paired with a high resolution time-of-arrival algorithm, capable of detecting the TOA and TOD of a pulse with an average error of less than 2ns. The high resolution pulse detector is vital for the measurement of high chirp rate, short pulse duration chirp signals when no a priori knowledge of the signals or operating environment is available. Three different receivers were designed and implemented in order to target three different applications: linear chirp signals, nonlinear chirp signals, and linear chirp signals with varying pulse widths. In addition to the digital IFM and TOA algorithm, a high rate 43-tap Hilbert Transform was implemented via an FIR filter in order to convert incoming real data from the ADC into its complex signal representation. All three designs were synthesized and successfully tested on a Xilinx Virtex 6 SX475 FPGA which is paired with a Calypso 12-bit ADC sampling at 2.56GHz. All three receivers run at a rate of 320MHz and can measure chirp rates up to 1180MHz in 400ns. The designs boast an overall detection rate of greater than 97% with a false alarm rate of 10^-7 and achieve a frequency measurement error of less than 1% for both chirp rates and carrier frequencies. The receivers can successfully detect and measure chirp signals and stationary carrier frequencies with SNRs 5dB and higher. The largest design, the digital nonlinear chirp receiver only utilizes 13% of the Virtex 6 SX475 FPGA board

Attosecond Streaking in the Water Window: A New Regime of Attosecond Pulse Characterization

We report on the first streaking measurement of water-window attosecond pulses generated via high harmonic generation, driven by sub-2-cycle, CEP-stable, 1850 nm laser pulses. Both the central photon energy and the energy bandwidth far exceed what has been demonstrated thus far, warranting the investigation of the attosecond streaking technique for the soft X-ray regime and the limits of the FROGCRAB retrieval algorithm under such conditions. We also discuss the problem of attochirp compensation and issues regarding much lower photo-ionization cross sections compared with the XUV in addition to the fact that several shells of target gases are accessed simultaneously. Based on our investigation, we caution that the vastly different conditions in the soft X-ray regime warrant a diligent examination of the fidelity of the measurement and the retrieval procedure.Comment: 14 Pages, 12 figure

Learning Wavefront Coding for Extended Depth of Field Imaging

Depth of field is an important factor of imaging systems that highly affects the quality of the acquired spatial information. Extended depth of field (EDoF) imaging is a challenging ill-posed problem and has been extensively addressed in the literature. We propose a computational imaging approach for EDoF, where we employ wavefront coding via a diffractive optical element (DOE) and we achieve deblurring through a convolutional neural network. Thanks to the end-to-end differentiable modeling of optical image formation and computational post-processing, we jointly optimize the optical design, i.e., DOE, and the deblurring through standard gradient descent methods. Based on the properties of the underlying refractive lens and the desired EDoF range, we provide an analytical expression for the search space of the DOE, which is instrumental in the convergence of the end-to-end network. We achieve superior EDoF imaging performance compared to the state of the art, where we demonstrate results with minimal artifacts in various scenarios, including deep 3D scenes and broadband imaging

Searching for a trail of evidence in a maze

Consider a graph with a set of vertices and oriented edges connecting pairs of vertices. Each vertex is associated with a random variable and these are assumed to be independent. In this setting, suppose we wish to solve the following hypothesis testing problem: under the null, the random variables have common distribution N(0,1) while under the alternative, there is an unknown path along which random variables have distribution $N(\mu,1)$, $\mu> 0$, and distribution N(0,1) away from it. For which values of the mean shift $\mu$ can one reliably detect and for which values is this impossible? Consider, for example, the usual regular lattice with vertices of the form $$\{(i,j):0\le i,-i\le j\le i and j has the parity of i\}$$ and oriented edges $(i,j)\to (i+1,j+s)$, where $s=\pm1$. We show that for paths of length $m$ starting at the origin, the hypotheses become distinguishable (in a minimax sense) if $\mu_m\gg1/\sqrt{\log m}$, while they are not if $\mu_m\ll1/\log m$. We derive equivalent results in a Bayesian setting where one assumes that all paths are equally likely; there, the asymptotic threshold is $\mu_m\approx m^{-1/4}$. We obtain corresponding results for trees (where the threshold is of order 1 and independent of the size of the tree), for distributions other than the Gaussian and for other graphs. The concept of the predictability profile, first introduced by Benjamini, Pemantle and Peres, plays a crucial role in our analysis.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-AOS526 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

SIGNAL: A Ka-band Digital Beam-Forming SAR System Concept to Monitor Topography Variations of Ice Caps and Glaciers

This paper discusses the implementation of an endto- end simulator for the BIOMASS mission. An overview of the system architecture is provided along with a functional description of the modules that comprise the simulator