5,420 research outputs found
Hitchhiker-G: A new carrier system for attached shuttle payloads
A new carrier system has been developed for economical and quick response flight of small attached payloads on the space shuttle. Hitchhiker-G can accommodate up to 750 lb. of customer payloads in canisters or mounted to an exposed plate. The carrier connects to the orbiter's electrical systems and provides up to six customers with standard electrical services including power, real time telemetry, and commands. A transparent data and command system concept is employed to allow the customer to easily use his own ground support equipment and personnel to control his payload during integration and flight operations. The first Hitchhiker-G was successfully flown in January 1986 on STS 61C
The Impact of CSI and Power Allocation on Relay Channel Capacity and Cooperation Strategies
Capacity gains from transmitter and receiver cooperation are compared in a
relay network where the cooperating nodes are close together. Under
quasi-static phase fading, when all nodes have equal average transmit power
along with full channel state information (CSI), it is shown that transmitter
cooperation outperforms receiver cooperation, whereas the opposite is true when
power is optimally allocated among the cooperating nodes but only CSI at the
receiver (CSIR) is available. When the nodes have equal power with CSIR only,
cooperative schemes are shown to offer no capacity improvement over
non-cooperation under the same network power constraint. When the system is
under optimal power allocation with full CSI, the decode-and-forward
transmitter cooperation rate is close to its cut-set capacity upper bound, and
outperforms compress-and-forward receiver cooperation. Under fast Rayleigh
fading in the high SNR regime, similar conclusions follow. Cooperative systems
provide resilience to fading in channel magnitudes; however, capacity becomes
more sensitive to power allocation, and the cooperating nodes need to be closer
together for the decode-and-forward scheme to be capacity-achieving. Moreover,
to realize capacity improvement, full CSI is necessary in transmitter
cooperation, while in receiver cooperation optimal power allocation is
essential.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Wireless
Communication
Distortion Minimization in Gaussian Layered Broadcast Coding with Successive Refinement
A transmitter without channel state information (CSI) wishes to send a
delay-limited Gaussian source over a slowly fading channel. The source is coded
in superimposed layers, with each layer successively refining the description
in the previous one. The receiver decodes the layers that are supported by the
channel realization and reconstructs the source up to a distortion. The
expected distortion is minimized by optimally allocating the transmit power
among the source layers. For two source layers, the allocation is optimal when
power is first assigned to the higher layer up to a power ceiling that depends
only on the channel fading distribution; all remaining power, if any, is
allocated to the lower layer. For convex distortion cost functions with convex
constraints, the minimization is formulated as a convex optimization problem.
In the limit of a continuum of infinite layers, the minimum expected distortion
is given by the solution to a set of linear differential equations in terms of
the density of the fading distribution. As the bandwidth ratio b (channel uses
per source symbol) tends to zero, the power distribution that minimizes
expected distortion converges to the one that maximizes expected capacity.
While expected distortion can be improved by acquiring CSI at the transmitter
(CSIT) or by increasing diversity from the realization of independent fading
paths, at high SNR the performance benefit from diversity exceeds that from
CSIT, especially when b is large.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor
Minimum Expected Distortion in Gaussian Layered Broadcast Coding with Successive Refinement
A transmitter without channel state information (CSI) wishes to send a
delay-limited Gaussian source over a slowly fading channel. The source is coded
in superimposed layers, with each layer successively refining the description
in the previous one. The receiver decodes the layers that are supported by the
channel realization and reconstructs the source up to a distortion. In the
limit of a continuum of infinite layers, the optimal power distribution that
minimizes the expected distortion is given by the solution to a set of linear
differential equations in terms of the density of the fading distribution. In
the optimal power distribution, as SNR increases, the allocation over the
higher layers remains unchanged; rather the extra power is allocated towards
the lower layers. On the other hand, as the bandwidth ratio b (channel uses per
source symbol) tends to zero, the power distribution that minimizes expected
distortion converges to the power distribution that maximizes expected
capacity. While expected distortion can be improved by acquiring CSI at the
transmitter (CSIT) or by increasing diversity from the realization of
independent fading paths, at high SNR the performance benefit from diversity
exceeds that from CSIT, especially when b is large.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the 2007 IEEE International Symposium
on Information Theory, Nice, France, June 24-29, 200
DNA-decorated graphene chemical sensors
Graphene is a true two dimensional material with exceptional electronic
properties and enormous potential for practical applications. Graphene's
promise as a chemical sensor material has been noted but there has been
relatively little work on practical chemical sensing using graphene, and in
particular how chemical functionalization may be used to sensitize graphene to
chemical vapors. Here we show one route towards improving the ability of
graphene to work as a chemical sensor by using single stranded DNA as a
sensitizing agent. The resulting broad response devices show fast response
times, complete and rapid recovery to baseline at room temperature, and
discrimination between several similar vapor analytes.Comment: 7 pages, To appear in Applied Physics Letter
Lessons Learned from Development of a Software Tool to Support Academic Advising
We detail some lessons learned while designing and testing a
decision-theoretic advising support tool for undergraduates at a large state
university. Between 2009 and 2011 we conducted two surveys of over 500 students
in multiple majors and colleges. These surveys asked students detailed
questions about their preferences concerning course selection, advising, and
career paths. We present data from this study which may be helpful for faculty
and staff who advise undergraduate students. We find that advising support
software tools can augment the student-advisor relationship, particularly in
terms of course planning, but cannot and should not replace in-person advising.Comment: 5 Figures, revised version including more figures and
cross-referencin
A Herschel [C II] Galactic plane survey II: CO-dark H2 in clouds
ABRIDGED: Context: HI and CO large scale surveys of the Milky Way trace the
diffuse atomic clouds and the dense shielded regions of molecular hydrogen
clouds. However, until recently, we have not had spectrally resolved C+ surveys
to characterize the photon dominated interstellar medium, including, the H2 gas
without C, the CO-dark H2, in a large sample of clouds. Aims: To use a sparse
Galactic plane survey of the 1.9 THz [C II] spectral line from the Herschel
Open Time Key Programme, Galactic Observations of Terahertz C+ (GOT C+), to
characterize the H2 gas without CO in a statistically significant sample of
clouds. Methods: We identify individual clouds in the inner Galaxy by fitting
[CII] and CO isotopologue spectra along each line of sight. We combine these
with HI spectra, along with excitation models and cloud models of C+, to
determine the column densities and fractional mass of CO-dark H2 clouds.
Results: We identify 1804 narrow velocity [CII] interstellar cloud components
in different categories. About 840 are diffuse molecular clouds with no CO, 510
are transition clouds containing [CII] and 12CO, but no 13CO, and the remainder
are dense molecular clouds containing 13CO emission. The CO-dark H2 clouds are
concentrated between Galactic radii 3.5 to 7.5 kpc and the column density of
the CO-dark H2 layer varies significantly from cloud-to-cloud with an average
9X10^(20) cm-2. These clouds contain a significant fraction of CO-dark H2 mass,
varying from ~75% for diffuse molecular clouds to ~20% for dense molecular
clouds. Conclusions: We find a significant fraction of the warm molecular ISM
gas is invisible in HI and CO, but is detected in [CII]. The fraction of
CO-dark H2 is greatest in the diffuse clouds and decreases with increasing
total column density, and is lowest in the massive clouds.Comment: 21 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in A&A (2014
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