Remote Programming of Implantable Cardiac Devices Utilizing Real-Time Active Telemedicine

Telemedicine is the exchange of medical information from one site to another in order to improve patient health and well-being. Telecardiology is the application of telemedicine to cardiology. With over one million pacemakers and implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) implanted every year, the need for a telecardiology system that can remotely interrogate and program pacemakers has increased over the past decade. Current advances in telecardiology can greatly increase the quality of life of a patient with a pacemaker. Interrogation of pacemakers occurs every six to twelve months and involves examining the battery capacity and peak voltages of pulses that are transmitted to the chamber walls inside the heart. Current telecardiology techniques only allow the cardiologist to remotely monitor a patient. The system of real-time active telecardiology implemented in this thesis allows for remote interrogation and programming capabilities through a Medtronic CareLink 2090 Programmer. The system samples touchscreen location data from a commercial-off-the-shelf touchscreen controller and transmits this information to a remote programmer which registers the data as a touch. Through this method, the cardiologist is able to remotely control a Medtronic 2090 Programmer with little change to the workflow of the cardiologist and at minimal cost to the hospital

A Novel RF Architecture for Simultaneous Communication, Navigation, and Remote Sensing with Software-Defined Radio

The rapid growth of SmallSat and CubeSat missions at NASA has necessitated a re-evaluation of communication and remote-sensing architectures. Novel designs for CubeSat-sized single-board computers can now include larger Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and faster System-on-Chip (SoCs) devices. These components substantially improve onboard processing capabilities so that varying subsystems no longer require an independent processor. By replacing individual Radio Frequency (RF) systems with a single software-defined radio (SDR) and processor, mission designers have greater control over reliability, performance, and efficiency. The presented architecture combines individual processing systems into a single design and establishes a modular SDR architecture capable of both remote-sensing and communication applications. This new approach based on a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) SDR features a scalable architecture optimized for Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWaP-C), with sufficient noise performance and phase-coherence to enable both remote-sensing and navigation applications, while providing a communication solution for simultaneous S-band and X-band transmission. This SDR design is developed around the NASA CubeSat Card Standard (CS2) that provides the required modularity through simplified backplane and interchangeable options for multiple radiation-hardened/tolerant processors. This architecture provides missions with a single platform for high-rate communication and a future platform to develop cognitive radio systems

Radiation-Tolerant, GaN-based Point of Load Converters for Small Spacecraft Missions

As computational loads for spacecraft continue to grow, the requirements levied on power-conversion electronics have become increasingly demanding. Designing for compute-intensive processing capabilities in the CubeSat form-factor further encourages the use of lightweight, compact, and efficient power-conversion electronics. However, the radiation-tolerant and radiation-hardened point-of-load converters available from existing vendors are large, expensive, and inefficient relative to their commercial counterparts. To alleviate this disparity, this paper presents the design, development, and testing of three radiation-tolerant, point-of-load (PoL) converters using Gallium Nitride (GaN) High-Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMT) and commercial controllers to enable the success of future small-satellite missions

NASA SpaceCube Intelligent Multi-Purpose System for Enabling Remote Sensing, Communication, and Navigation in Mission Architectures

New, innovative CubeSat mission concepts demand modern capabilities such as artificial intelligence and autonomy, constellation coordination, fault mitigation, and robotic servicing – all of which require vastly more processing resources than legacy systems are capable of providing. Enabling these domains within a scalable, configurable processing architecture is advantageous because it also allows for the flexibility to address varying mission roles, such as a command and data-handling system, a high-performance application processor extension, a guidance and navigation solution, or an instrument/sensor interface. This paper describes the NASA SpaceCube Intelligent Multi-Purpose System (IMPS), which allows mission developers to mix-and-match 1U (10 cm × 10 cm) CubeSat payloads configured for mission-specific needs. The central enabling component of the system architecture to address these concerns is the SpaceCube v3.0 Mini Processor. This single-board computer features the 20nm Xilinx Kintex UltraScale FPGA combined with a radiation-hardened FPGA monitor, and extensive IO to integrate and interconnect varying cards within the system. To unify the re-usable designs within this architecture, the CubeSat Card Standard was developed to guide design of 1U cards. This standard defines pinout configurations, mechanical, and electrical specifications for 1U CubeSat cards, allowing the backplane and mechanical enclosure to be easily extended. NASA has developed several cards adhering to the standard (System-on-Chip, power card, etc.), which allows the flexibility to configure a payload from a common catalog of cards

SpaceCube v3.0 NASA Next-Generation High-Performance Processor for Science Applications

Electronics for space systems must address several considerable challenges including achieving operational resiliency within the hazardous space environment and also meeting application performance needs while simultaneously managing size, weight, and power requirements. To drive the future revolution in space processing, onboard systems need to be more flexible, affordable, and robust. In order to provide a robust solution to a variety of missions and instruments, the Science Data Processing Branch at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)has pioneered a hybrid-processing approach that combines radiation-hardened and commercial components while emphasizing a novel architecture harmonizing the best capabilities of CPUs, DSPs, and FPGAs. This hybrid approach is realized through the SpaceCube family of processor cards that have extensive flight heritage on a variety of mission classes. The latest addition to the SpaceCube family, SpaceCube v3.0, will function as the next evolutionary step for upcoming missions, allow for prototyping of designs and software, and provide a flexible, mature architecture that is also ready to adopt the radiation-hardened High-Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) chiplet when it is released. The research showcased in this paper describes the design methodology, analysis, and capabilities of the SpaceCube v3.0 SpaceVPX Lite (VITA 78.1) 3U-220mm form-factor processor card

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements