Electrical/​Electronics

The IEEE 1394 and I2C Mixed-Signal Driver is one of two application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) designed to function together as an interface among the following three digital-signal buses: A peripheral component interface (PCI) bus; A high-speed serial data bus that conforms to...

A high-speed observer (HSO) system comprising a high-frame-rate digital video camera and a high-speed computer that processes the camera output has been developed for use in monitoring the exhaust plume of the space shuttle main engine (SSME) during tests. The HSO system is designed to analyze...

Root Cause Analysis (RoCA) is a computer program that assists analysts in understanding the root causes of process anomalies. As used here, “process anomalies” includes incidents that have caused, or that can potentially cause, injuries to personnel, damage to facilities, abnormal costs,...

“Ex” is the name of a library of software modules from which one can rapidly develop prototype or production versions of efficient numerical-computation application programs in the Native Oberon programming environment. Mathematical constructs that can be represented and processed by...

A report describes two radiation-hard application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that constitute a mixed-signal chip set that performs all the control functions for a power-converter module (PCM) in a spacecraft power-supply system. One of these ASICs serves mainly as a pulse-width modulation...

A simple, inexpensive device has been conceived for shifting the phase of a signal in a feed line of a scanning-beam microstrip antenna in order to change the direction of the beam. Heretofore, phase shifters used for this purpose have been relatively bulky and expensive.

Nickel-hydrogen electrochemical cells with capacities of 350 ampere-hours have been developed. These cells are intended primarily for use in government and commercial satellites; they have been fully qualified to satisfy performance requirements for operation in geosynchronous satellites for as long as 15 years....

A report presents some results of continuing efforts to develop advanced thermoelectric devices and, more particularly, thermoelectric unicouples for generating electric power from diverse thermal sources, including automotive exhausts and other waste-heat sources. The basic principles of...

A report proposes a method of cooperative modulation between (1) low-power radio transceivers associated with sensors geographically dispersed on a remote planet for relaying information between the sensors and an Earth station. The method, denoted node selection on orthogonal...

A report describes an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for controlling a power-switching metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) in a spacecraft power-supply system. Denoted an SCA (for switch-control ASIC), this ASIC is designed to be radiation-hard and to...

The Meteorological Range Safety Support System/Eastern Range Dispersion Assessment System (MARSS/ERDAS) is a system of interconnected computer workstations designed to acquire, process, and disseminate nearly real-time meteorological data and outputs of mathematical models of the atmospheric...