Tech Briefs

Electronics & Software

Access our comprehensive library of technical briefs on electronics and software, from engineering experts at NASA and major government, university, and commercial laboratories.

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Briefs: Software
Program for Updating Parameters of Thermal Models
Parameter Identification in Thermal Networks (PITN) is a computer program developed to satisfy a need to update parameters in mathematical models of thermal systems in order to make the temperatures computed by the models equal to the temperatures measured in tests of the corresponding real...
Briefs: Software
Program Tracks Operation of a Remote Solid-State Recorder
Solid State Recorder Pointer Tracker (SSRPT) is a computer program developed specifically to aid ground-based monitoring and control of two redundant solid-state recorders (SSRs) aboard the Cassini Spacecraft. The SSRs store telemetry data until downlink times, which are limited to a...
Briefs: Software
Library for Developing Spacecraft-Mission-Planning Software
The Platform Independent Software Components for the Exploration of Space (PISCES) software library provides for web-based, collaborative development of computer programs for planning trajectories and other trajectory-related aspects of spacecraft-mission design. The PISCES library...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Arrays of photon-counting detectors and associated digital signal processors have been proposed for receivers in optical communication systems in which the optical signals...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A low-power capacitive proximity sensor has been developed as a prototype of wheel-contact sensors for a small robotic vehicle. The sensor is integrated into a wheel and consists of only a few...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Black Jack GPS Receiver
The Black Jack (BJ) receiver is the revolutionary flight Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver developed by NASA to fill future needs for orbit-based GPS science. These range from a receiver to determine precise (1-cm radial accuracy goal for JASON-1) orbits, to missions using the GPS signals for remote sensing of the...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Digitally programmable analog membership-function circuits have been invented for use in fuzzy-logic systems. Heretofore, fuzzy membership functions have been implemented, variously, by...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Regenerative Pseudonoise Ranging
In a proposed improved technique for pseudonoise turnaround ranging of a radio transponder, the pseudonoise modulating signal would be regenerated in the transponder. The net result of the regeneration would be an increase in the effective return ranging power. This increase would provide some margin for decreasing...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Analog electronic circuits that operate with pulsed input and output signals are undergoing development. The pulsing behavior of these circuits is modeled after a similar behavior, called...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Weighing Scales Based on Low-Power Strain-Gauge Circuits
Weighing scales (e.g., kitchen and bathroom scales) of a proposed type would incorporate sensory devices like the one described in "Low-Power, Microprocessor-Controlled Strain-Gauge Circuit" (NPO-19750), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 21, No. 1 (January 1997), page 45. Unlike other weighing scales...
Briefs: Software
Generating Maps of the Ionosphere From GPS Measurements
The Global Ionospheric Monitoring and Forecasting System (GIMSYS) computer program generates global maps of the total electron content (TEC) (electron density integrated over all altitude) of the ionosphere, maps of ionospheric irregularities, and related data byproducts. The maps are...
Briefs: Software
Program for Simulating Rotor Dynamics on Personal Computers
ARDS (Analysis of RotorDynamic Systems) is a public-domain computer program that simulates transient and steady-state dynamics of a rotary machine that can include as many as five interconnected flexible shafts. ARDS can be used to analyze the dynamics of such diverse machines as...
Briefs: Software
Software for Monitoring and Controlling DSN Operations
Network Monitor and Control (NMC) Automation Assembly (AA) is a component of the NMC software system, which is used for controlling an antenna connection in the Deep Space Network. NMC AA could also be adapted to commercial applications (e.g., chemical processing), in which human operators must...
Briefs: Information Technology
General-Purpose Wavelet Program
"S+Wavelets" is the name of a computer program that implements a suite of mathematical "tools" for wavelet analysis of signals (including two-dimensional signals that represent images.) Wavelets, being localized in both time and frequency (or space and wave number), serve as means for transforming and extracting...
Briefs: Information Technology
Automated Generation of Reports of Mars Rover Operations
A document describes a system for the automated generation of reports of operations of a robotic exploratory vehicle (rover) on Mars. The automated report-generation system supplants a predominantly manual system, thereby making more information available in less time and reducing the...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A proposed system for simultaneous characterization of the instability of several precise, low-noise oscillators of nominally equal frequency would be built around a commercially...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A proposed digital carrier-signal-tracking loop in a radio transponder could be programmed to operate in either a perfect-integration or an imperfect-integration mode. Although originally...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
An improved design for a conical log-spiral antenna (see Figure 1) simplifies construction and improves alignment. The radiating-element substructure of such an antenna must be properly...
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Briefs: Software
Programming Language for Automated Scheduling and Planning
The ASPEN Modeling Language (AML) has been developed for use in the Automated Scheduling and Planning Environment (ASPEN) software system. As described in prior NASA Tech Briefs articles, ASPEN is an object-oriented system that contains a modular, reconfigurable, reusable set of...
Briefs: Software
Communication Software for Distributed Application Programs
The Task Remote Asynchronous Message Exchange Layer (Tramel) software reduces the costs of distributing application programs across computer networks, including the Internet. Tramel implements robust, reliable, simple, highly portable interprocess communication, such that distributed...
Briefs: Software
Software for Coordinating Multiple Exploratory Robots
A computer program coordinates the activities of multiple instrumented robotic vehicles of the "rover" type intended for use in scientific exploration. The program is a master/slave, distributed version of the ASPEN planning software, other versions of which have been reported in several...
Briefs: Software
Program Creates Code to Parse Text
Saxj is a computer program that facilitates the development of programs that parse textual input in the Java programming language. Saxj is a parser generator that creates static Java parsers in the same sense in which YACC, Bison, and YACC++ are static parser generators that create static C-language parsers....
Briefs: Software
Program Creates Java Lexical Analyzers
Luthorj is a computer program that creates static lexical analyzers in the Java programming language, in the same sense in which Flex and Lex create lexical analyzers in the C programming language. The majority of users of Luthorj are expected to be familiar with Lex, and Luthorj parses input files that...
Briefs: Software
Program for Evaluating Spacecraft Designs and Missions
Design for X (DFX) is a computer program that assists, at the prelimary stage of planning, in the evaluaiton of alternative spacecraft designs and mission scenarios. The input required by DFX includes a set of operations goals (scientific and engineering goals and constraints), a mathematical...
Briefs: Semiconductors & ICs
A new design for a complementary metal oxide/semiconductor (CMOS) snapshot imaging device of the photodiode-based, active-pixel-sensor (APS) type calls for features to prevent...
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Briefs: Information Technology
Algorithms have been developed to enable a robotic vision system to recognize, in real time (at a rate between 0.5 and 2 frames per second), known objects lying on the ground. In the...
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Briefs: Information Technology
DVQ (which stands for "digital video quality") is a metric for evaluating the visual quality of digitized video images. Other video-quality metrics have been proposed, but it appears that each of...
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Briefs: Software
Infrastructure Software for Mining Image Data Bases
Diamond Eye is a computer program that enables a user equipped with only a personal computer, web-browser software, and a network connection to analyze large collections of scientific image data. The system is based on a distributed applet/server architecture that provides platform-independent...
Briefs: Software
Software for Rapid Processing and Display of Earth Data
Digital Earth Workbench is a computer program that facilitates retrieval of Earth-related imagery and viewing of the imagery on either an ordinary computer video screen or a virtual-reality (head-tracked stereoscopic) display system. Examples of imagery that can be processed bythis software...

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