Electrical/​Electronics

Marlow Industries (Dallas, TX) has introduced the EverGen series of thermoelectric-based energy harvesting devices, offering a zero-maintenance power solution for wireless sensor applications. EverGen thermal energy harvesters power wireless sensors without a battery, reducing replacement...

The Uninhabited Airborne Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) is a pod-based, L-band (1.26 GHz), repeatpass, interferometric, synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) used for Earth science applications. Repeat-pass interferometric radar measurements from an airborne platform require an antenna that can be...

This innovation provides reconfigurable circuitry and 2-Gb of error-corrected or 1-Gb of triple-redundant digital memory in a small package. RTIMS uses circuit stacking of heterogeneous components and radiation shielding technologies. A reprogrammable field-programmable gate array (FPGA), six...

A radiation-tolerant, ultra-low-dropout linear regulator can operate between –150 and 150 ºC. Prototype components were demonstrated to be performing well after a total ionizing dose of 1 Mrad (Si). Unlike existing components, the linear regulator developed during this activity is unconditionally stable over...

This work addresses the problem of excitation of a parallel plate waveguide by an array of rectangular waveguides that arises in applications such as the continuous transverse stub (CTS) antenna and dual-polarized parabolic cylindrical reflector antennas excited by a...

The Lockout/Tagout (LOTO) Simulator is a portable training aid, or demonstration tool, designed to physically illustrate real-time critical-safety concepts of electrical lockout/tagout. The objective is to prevent misinterpretations of what is off and what is on during maintenance and repair of complex electrical...

A PLGT FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) is included in the LCC (Load Control Card), GID (Guidance Interface & Drivers), TMC (Telemetry Multiplexer Card), and PFC (Pyro Firing Card) boards of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft. (PLGT stands for PFC, LCC, GID, and TMC.) It provides the interface...

Students, teachers, and commercial companies have been taking advantage of the International Space Station's (ISS) unique environment for years. One of those companies, Houston-based Odyssey Space Research, plans to bring the experience to the rest of us via our mobile devices.

INSIDER reader Kenneth Polcak submitted a "Question of the Week" to his fellow design engineer pros:

Significant improvements have been made in the instrument originally described in a prior NASA Tech Briefs article: “Improved Speed and Functionality of a 580-GHz Imaging Radar” (NPO-45156), Vol. 34, No. 7 (July 2010), p. 51. First, the wideband YIG oscillator has been replaced...

The Interplanetary Overlay Networking Protocol Accelerator (IONAC) described previously in “The Interplanetary Overlay Networking Protocol Accelerator” (NPO-45584), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 32, No. 10, (October 2008) p. 106 provides functions that implement the Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) bundle protocol. New missions that require...