Reconstructing the calibrated strain signal in the Advanced LIGO detectors

Advanced LIGO's raw detector output needs to be calibrated to compute dimensionless strain h(t). Calibrated strain data is produced in the time domain using both a low-latency, online procedure and a high-latency, offline procedure. The low-latency h(t) data stream is produced in two stages, the first of which is performed on the same computers that operate the detector's feedback control system. This stage, referred to as the front-end calibration, uses infinite impulse response (IIR) filtering and performs all operations at a 16384 Hz digital sampling rate. Due to several limitations, this procedure currently introduces certain systematic errors in the calibrated strain data, motivating the second stage of the low-latency procedure, known as the low-latency gstlal calibration pipeline. The gstlal calibration pipeline uses finite impulse response (FIR) filtering to apply corrections to the output of the front-end calibration. It applies time-dependent correction factors to the sensing and actuation components of the calibrated strain to reduce systematic errors. The gstlal calibration pipeline is also used in high latency to recalibrate the data, which is necessary due mainly to online dropouts in the calibrated data and identified improvements to the calibration models or filters.Comment: 20 pages including appendices and bibliography. 11 Figures. 3 Table

Measurements and a model for convective velocities in the turbulent boundary layer

A physical model is presented which describes convective velocities within a flat plate turbulent boundary layer. A production zone concept is used as a basis for the physical model. The production zone concept employs the idea that packets of turbulent fluid are generated near the viscous sublayer. These packets are found to be discernible from the mean motion and may move either outward from the production zone or inward depending on their circulation relative to the fluid surrounding the packet. The packets are predicted to travel with a convective velocity different from the local mean velocity throughout most of the boundary layer. The model also predicts that the convective velocities will be functions of wave number outside the production zone

Sub-Nyquist Channel Estimation over IEEE 802.11ad Link

Nowadays, millimeter-wave communication centered at the 60 GHz radio frequency band is increasingly the preferred technology for near-field communication since it provides transmission bandwidth that is several GHz wide. The IEEE 802.11ad standard has been developed for commercial wireless local area networks in the 60 GHz transmission environment. Receivers designed to process IEEE 802.11ad waveforms employ very high rate analog-to-digital converters, and therefore, reducing the receiver sampling rate can be useful. In this work, we study the problem of low-rate channel estimation over the IEEE 802.11ad 60 GHz communication link by harnessing sparsity in the channel impulse response. In particular, we focus on single carrier modulation and exploit the special structure of the 802.11ad waveform embedded in the channel estimation field of its single carrier physical layer frame. We examine various sub-Nyquist sampling methods for this problem and recover the channel using compressed sensing techniques. Our numerical experiments show feasibility of our procedures up to one-seventh of the Nyquist rates with minimal performance deterioration.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, SampTA 2017 conferenc

Transport delay compensation for computer-generated imagery systems

In the problem of pure transport delay in a low-pass system, a trade-off exists with respect to performance within and beyond a frequency bandwidth. When activity beyond the band is attenuated because of other considerations, this trade-off may be used to improve the performance within the band. Specifically, transport delay in computer-generated imagery systems is reduced to a manageable problem by recognizing frequency limits in vehicle activity and manual-control capacity. Based on these limits, a compensation algorithm has been developed for use in aircraft simulation at NASA Ames Research Center. For direct measurement of transport delays, a beam-splitter experiment is presented that accounts for the complete flight simulation environment. Values determined by this experiment are appropriate for use in the compensation algorithm. The algorithm extends the bandwidth of high-frequency flight simulation to well beyond that of normal pilot inputs. Within this bandwidth, the visual scene presentation manifests negligible gain distortion and phase lag. After a year of utilization, two minor exceptions to universal simulation applicability have been identified and subsequently resolved

Super-resolution in map-making based on a physical instrument model and regularized inversion. Application to SPIRE/Herschel

We investigate super-resolution methods for image reconstruction from data provided by a family of scanning instruments like the Herschel observatory. To do this, we constructed a model of the instrument that faithfully reflects the physical reality, accurately taking the acquisition process into account to explain the data in a reliable manner. The inversion, ie the image reconstruction process, is based on a linear approach resulting from a quadratic regularized criterion and numerical optimization tools. The application concerns the reconstruction of maps for the SPIRE instrument of the Herschel observatory. The numerical evaluation uses simulated and real data to compare the standard tool (coaddition) and the proposed method. The inversion approach is capable to restore spatial frequencies over a bandwidth four times that possible with coaddition and thus to correctly show details invisible on standard maps. The approach is also applied to real data with significant improvement in spatial resolution.Comment: Astronomy & Astrophysic

Development and application of a non-Gaussian atmospheric turbulence model for use in flight simulators

A method is described for generating time histories which model the frequency content and certain non-Gaussian probability characteristics of atmospheric turbulence including the large gusts and patchy nature of turbulence. Methods for time histories using either analog or digital computation are described. A STOL airplane was programmed into a 6-degree-of-freedom flight simulator, and turbulence time histories from several atmospheric turbulence models were introduced. The pilots' reactions are described

Study to investigate and evaluate means of optimizing the Ku-band combined radar/communication functions for the space shuttle

The Ku band radar system on the shuttle orbiter operates in both a search and a tracking mode, and its transmitter and antennas share time with the communication mode in the integrated system. The power allocation properties and the Costa subloop subcarrier tracking performance associated with the baseline digital phase shift implementation of the three channel orbiter Ku band modulator are discussed

Onset of synchronization in networks of second-order Kuramoto oscillators with delayed coupling: Exact results and application to phase-locked loops

We consider the inertial Kuramoto model of $N$ globally coupled oscillators characterized by both their phase and angular velocity, in which there is a time delay in the interaction between the oscillators. Besides the academic interest, we show that the model can be related to a network of phase-locked loops widely used in electronic circuits for generating a stable frequency at multiples of an input frequency. We study the model for a generic choice of the natural frequency distribution of the oscillators, to elucidate how a synchronized phase bifurcates from an incoherent phase as the coupling constant between the oscillators is tuned. We show that in contrast to the case with no delay, here the system in the stationary state may exhibit either a subcritical or a supercritical bifurcation between a synchronized and an incoherent phase, which is dictated by the value of the delay present in the interaction and the precise value of inertia of the oscillators. Our theoretical analysis, performed in the limit $N \to \infty$, is based on an unstable manifold expansion in the vicinity of the bifurcation, which we apply to the kinetic equation satisfied by the single-oscillator distribution function. We check our results by performing direct numerical integration of the dynamics for large $N$, and highlight the subtleties arising from having a finite number of oscillators.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures; v2: 16 pages, 5 figures, published versio

The reconfigurable Josephson circulator/directional amplifier

Circulators and directional amplifiers are crucial non-reciprocal signal routing and processing components involved in microwave readout chains for a variety of applications. They are particularly important in the field of superconducting quantum information, where the devices also need to have minimal photon losses to preserve the quantum coherence of signals. Conventional commercial implementations of each device suffer from losses and are built from very different physical principles, which has led to separate strategies for the construction of their quantum-limited versions. However, as recently proposed theoretically, by establishing simultaneous pairwise conversion and/or gain processes between three modes of a Josephson-junction based superconducting microwave circuit, it is possible to endow the circuit with the functions of either a phase-preserving directional amplifier or a circulator. Here, we experimentally demonstrate these two modes of operation of the same circuit. Furthermore, in the directional amplifier mode, we show that the noise performance is comparable to standard non-directional superconducting amplifiers, while in the circulator mode, we show that the sense of circulation is fully reversible. Our device is far simpler in both modes of operation than previous proposals and implementations, requiring only three microwave pumps. It offers the advantage of flexibility, as it can dynamically switch between modes of operation as its pump conditions are changed. Moreover, by demonstrating that a single three-wave process yields non-reciprocal devices with reconfigurable functions, our work breaks the ground for the development of future, more-complex directional circuits, and has excellent prospects for on-chip integration