Synthetic TDR Measurements for TEM and GTEM Cell Characterization

This paper describes the main features of the timedomain reflectometry (TDR) measurement technique and, in particular, the TDR analysis performed using a proper operating mode of the vector network analyzer (VNA), which is called synthetic TDR. Furthermore, some results of reflection measurement, which aim to characterize the impedance behavior of transverse electromagnetic (TEM) and gigahertz TEM cells by means of a commercial VNA in time-domain mode, are presented

Spatial Vector Microwave Measurement

V této práci je představena nová interferometrická měřicí metoda pro měření koeficientu přenosu mezi dvěma anténami. Jestliže je přenos mezi anténami realizován odrazem od nějakého předmětu, lze metodu využít např. pro mikrovlnné zobrazování. Navržený systém obsahuje referenční větev obsahující anténu, která přímo ozařuje přijímací anténu a testovací větev, kde anténa ozařuje testovaný objekt. Elektromagnetická vlna z testovacího kanálu je od testovacího objektu odražena do přijímací antény, kde interferuje s vlnou z referenční větve. Pro jednoznačné získání fázového posunu mezi referenční a testovací vlnou jsou provedena postupně minimálně dvě interferometrická měření, kdy je v referenčním kanálu nastaven vhodný fázový posun a amplituda přenosu. Při měření můžeme provést více nezávislých interferometrických měření a vzniklá redundance může být využita ke zmenšení nejistot měření. Dále byl popsán způsob geometrické representace měření, který umožňuje názorně odhadnout nejisty měření. Nejistoty měření byly určeny i na základě numerické Monte Carlo metody. Navržená konfigurace byla ověřena jak přesným měřením za použití vektorového analyzátoru pro ověření nejistot měření, tak původní konfigurací pro ověření funkčnosti celého konceptu. Navrženou metodou bylo provedeno mikrovlnné zobrazování metodou inverzní syntetické apertury a byla tak ověřena použitelnost navrženého systému.This work presents a new interferometric measuring method for measuring the transmission coefficient between two antennas. If the transmission between the antennas is realized by a reflection from an object, the method can be used, e.g., for microwave imaging. The proposed system contains a reference branch containing an antenna that directly irradiates the receiving antenna and a test branch where the antenna irradiates the object under test. The electromagnetic wave from the test channel is reflected from the test object into the receiving antenna where it interferes with the wave from the reference channel. To achieve a unambiguous phase shift between the reference and test waves, at least two interferometric measurements are performed sequentially, with a suitable phase shift and the amplitude of the transmission being set in the reference channel. We can perform more independent interferometric measurements while redundancy can be used to reduce measurement uncertainty. Furthermore, a method of geometric representation of the measurement has been described which makes it possible to clearly estimate the measurement uncertainty. Measurement uncertainties were determined by the numerical Monte Carlo method. The proposed configuration has been verified by accurate measurements using a vector analyzer to verify measurement uncertainties, and the original configuration to verify the functionality of the entire concept. Microwave imaging using the inverse synthetic aperture method was performed to verify the usability of the proposed system

An Alternate Control Scheme for Reconfigurable Virtual Instruments

The widespread usage of personal computers in many scientific and technological fields makes them an ideal hardware and software platform for the implementation of measurement instruments. Reconfigurable virtual instruments are implemented using a universal general purpose reconfigurable hardware whose functionality is defined by the measurement requirement. It is a versatile hardware device that can be reconfigured into different electronic instruments using a software tool. A high-level software application runs on the PC and provides a user interface to the operator who can select a virtual instrument (e.g. digital oscilloscope, arbitrary waveform generator, logic analyzer, digital filter?) from a library of instruments and configures the RVI system to convert it into the selected instrument with its associated console. The speech recognition interface enhances the ability of the operator to control various system components without manually navigating the graphical user interface (GUI). Several options were considered during the analysis but only one option proved to be optimal. The solution described in this paper uses the NXP semiconductors ARMLPC2148 microcontroller to handle all speech recognition calculations. The GUI control system runs on the main PC processor and the controlled instruments are attached to the system through RS232 interface. Speech recognition performance analysis is done for both PC based approach and dedicated hardware based approach in terms of realizing and controlling the VIs and the results are compared

RF Measurement Techniques

For the characterization of components, systems and signals in the range of microwave and radio-frequencies (RF) specific equipment and dedicated measurement instruments are used. In this article the fundamentals of RF signal processing and measurement techniques are discussed. It gives complementary background information for the introduction to RF Measurement Techniques and the Practical RF Course, which are part of the Advanced Accelerator Physics training program of the CERN Accelerator School (CAS) and have also been presented at the CAS 2018 Special Topic Course in Beam Instrumentation.Comment: 54 pages, contribution to the CAS - CERN Accelerator School: Beam Instrumentation, 2-15 June 2018, Tuusula, Finlan

Optimal Exploitation of the Sentinel-2 Spectral Capabilities for Crop Leaf Area Index Mapping

The continuously increasing demand of accurate quantitative high quality information on land surface properties will be faced by a new generation of environmental Earth observation (EO) missions. One current example, associated with a high potential to contribute to those demands, is the multi-spectral ESA Sentinel-2 (S2) system. The present study focuses on the evaluation of spectral information content needed for crop leaf area index (LAI) mapping in view of the future sensors. Data from a field campaign were used to determine the optimal spectral sampling from available S2 bands applying inversion of a radiative transfer model (PROSAIL) with look-up table (LUT) and artificial neural network (ANN) approaches. Overall LAI estimation performance of the proposed LUT approach (LUTN₅₀) was comparable in terms of retrieval performances with a tested and approved ANN method. Employing seven- and eight-band combinations, the LUTN₅₀ approach obtained LAI RMSE of 0.53 and normalized LAI RMSE of 0.12, which was comparable to the results of the ANN. However, the LUTN50 method showed a higher robustness and insensitivity to different band settings. Most frequently selected wavebands were located in near infrared and red edge spectral regions. In conclusion, our results emphasize the potential benefits of the Sentinel-2 mission for agricultural applications

Design Of Polynomial-based Filters For Continuously Variable Sample Rate Conversion With Applications In Synthetic Instrumentati

In this work, the design and application of Polynomial-Based Filters (PBF) for continuously variable Sample Rate Conversion (SRC) is studied. The major contributions of this work are summarized as follows. First, an explicit formula for the Fourier Transform of both a symmetrical and nonsymmetrical PBF impulse response with variable basis function coefficients is derived. In the literature only one explicit formula is given, and that for a symmetrical even length filter with fixed basis function coefficients. The frequency domain optimization of PBFs via linear programming has been proposed in the literature, however, the algorithm was not detailed nor were explicit formulas derived. In this contribution, a minimax optimization procedure is derived for the frequency domain optimization of a PBF with time-domain constraints. Explicit formulas are given for direct input to a linear programming routine. Additionally, accompanying Matlab code implementing this optimization in terms of the derived formulas is given in the appendix. In the literature, it has been pointed out that the frequency response of the Continuous-Time (CT) filter decays as frequency goes to infinity. It has also been observed that when implemented in SRC, the CT filter is sampled resulting in CT frequency response aliasing. Thus, for example, the stopband sidelobes of the Discrete-Time (DT) implementation rise above the CT designed level. Building on these observations, it is shown how the rolloff rate of the frequency response of a PBF can be adjusted by adding continuous derivatives to the impulse response. This is of great advantage, especially when the PBF is used for decimation as the aliasing band attenuation can be made to increase with frequency. It is shown how this technique can be used to dramatically reduce the effect of alias build up in the passband. In addition, it is shown that as the number of continuous derivatives of the PBF increases the resulting DT implementation more closely matches the Continuous-Time (CT) design. When implemented for SRC, samples from a PBF impulse response are computed by evaluating the polynomials using a so-called fractional interval, µ. In the literature, the effect of quantizing µ on the frequency response of the PBF has been studied. Formulas have been derived to determine the number of bits required to keep frequency response distortion below prescribed bounds. Elsewhere, a formula has been given to compute the number of bits required to represent µ to obtain a given SRC accuracy for rational factor SRC. In this contribution, it is shown how these two apparently competing requirements are quite independent. In fact, it is shown that the wordlength required for SRC accuracy need only be kept in the µ generator which is a single accumulator. The output of the µ generator may then be truncated prior to polynomial evaluation. This results in significant computational savings, as polynomial evaluation can require several multiplications and additions. Under the heading of applications, a new Wideband Digital Downconverter (WDDC) for Synthetic Instruments (SI) is introduced. DDCs first tune to a signal\u27s center frequency using a numerically controlled oscillator and mixer, and then zoom-in to the bandwidth of interest using SRC. The SRC is required to produce continuously variable output sample rates from a fixed input sample rate over a large range. Current implementations accomplish this using a pre-filter, an arbitrary factor resampler, and integer decimation filters. In this contribution, the SRC of the WDDC is simplified reducing the computational requirements to a factor of three or more. In addition to this, it is shown how this system can be used to develop a novel computationally efficient FFT-based spectrum analyzer with continuously variable frequency spans. Finally, after giving the theoretical foundation, a real Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation of a novel Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG) is presented. The new approach uses a fixed Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) sample clock in combination with an arbitrary factor interpolator. Waveforms created at any sample rate are interpolated to the fixed DAC sample rate in real-time. As a result, the additional lower performance analog hardware required in current approaches, namely, multiple reconstruction filters and/or additional sample clocks, is avoided. Measured results are given confirming the performance of the system predicted by the theoretical design and simulation

Design of an Embedded Readout System for the ALOFT Gamma-Ray Detector Instrument

Birkeland Center for Space Science has proposed a campaign known as the Airborne Lightning Observatory for FEGS & TGFs (ALOFT) to study Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes (TGFs). TGFs are the most energetic natural phenomena occurring in the Earth’s atmosphere, and are important to our knowledge about the relationship between the Earth and space. The ALOFT campaign will use a gamma-ray detector instrument built by the University of Bergen which will be mounted to the NASA ER-2 High-Altitude Airborne Science Aircraft. This work covers the design and development of the embedded software used to offload and operate the detector readout system of said instrument. A similar instrument was built and flown in 2017. The new instrument differs from this by being implemented on a System on a Chip (SoC) embedded platform, reusing relevant modules from the old instrument. The software has been implemented with the FreeRTOS Realtime Operating System (RTOS). Design considerations to limit complexity, and the impact of the radiation environment the instrument is to be operated in, has been performed trough implementation of a checksum algorithm, cyclic rewriting of registers, and modular design strategies. A verification system has been realized with a prototype hardware setup, in which test systems has been added to process synthetic TGF-events in the software and hardware. Test with emulated data and a Telnet control interface has been successfully implemented. The current implementation focuses on modularity, and thus offers a very good framework for further development of the instrument when campaign specifications are decided.Masteroppgåve i fysikkMAMN-PHYSPHYS39

The sound of a Martian dust devil

Dust devils (convective vortices loaded with dust) are common at the surface of Mars, particularly at Jezero crater, the landing site of the Perseverance rover. They are indicators of atmospheric turbulence and are an important lifting mechanism for the Martian dust cycle. Improving our understanding of dust lifting and atmospheric transport is key for accurate simulation of the dust cycle and for the prediction of dust storms, in addition to being important for future space exploration as grain impacts are implicated in the degradation of hardware on the surface of Mars. Here we describe the sound of a Martian dust devil as recorded by the SuperCam instrument on the Perseverance rover. The dust devil encounter was also simultaneously imaged by the Perseverance rover's Navigation Camera and observed by several sensors in the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer instrument. Combining these unique multi-sensorial data with modelling, we show that the dust devil was around 25m large, at least 118m tall, and passed directly over the rover travelling at approximately 5ms-1. Acoustic signals of grain impacts recorded during the vortex encounter provide quantitative information about the number density of particles in the vortex. The sound of a Martian dust devil was inaccessible until SuperCam microphone recordings. This chance dust devil encounter demonstrates the potential of acoustic data for resolving the rapid wind structure of the Martian atmosphere and for directly quantifying wind-blown grain fluxes on Mars.We are most grateful for the support of the Mars 2020 project team, including hardware and operation teams. This project was supported in the US by the NASA Mars Exploration Program, and in France by CNES. It is based on observations with SuperCam embarked on Perseverance (Mars2020). The research carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, is under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). The JPL co-author (M.T.) acknowledges funding from NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and the Science Mission Directorate. A. V-R is supported by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) Project No. MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia “María de Maeztu”- Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC), and by the Comunidad de Madrid Project S2018/NMT-4291 (TEC2SPACE-CM). R.H. and A.S-L. were supported by Grant PID2019-109467GB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and by Grupos Gobierno Vasco IT1742-22. A.M. was supported by Grant PRE2020-092562 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ESF Investing in your future”. R.L. acknowledges InSight PSP Grant 80NSSC18K1626 as well as the Mars 2020 project. B.C. is supported by the Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, grant 20210960PRD3. JA.RM., M.M, J.T and J.G-E were supported by MCIN/AEI’s Grant RTI2018-098728-B-C31