Electrical/​Electronics

The design of a highly reliable controller for a digital data bus incorporates improvements, in both hardware and software, over the basic design of a low-speed, low-power, serial bus known in the industry as "I2C." ("I2C" signifies "inter integrated circuit bus" — a bus developed by Philips...

An Airfield Wind Advisory System (AWAS) includes a self-contained weather station, located at an airfield, that measures speed and direction of the wind, the temperature, the barometric pressure, and the humidity. This ground station digitizes these measurements and transmits the measurement data...

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...

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...

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...

A technique of automatic bias compensation has been devised to correct errors caused by variations among electronic components in Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers that use the coarse/acquisition (C/A) GPS code. Even though there are large government and commercial markets for such GPS receivers,...

A document in the form of lecture slides outlines a program of development of capabilities for acquisition of signals, tracking of signal sources, and pointing of transmitters and receivers in deep-space optical communications. Topics addressed on the first few slides include the...

The term "microGPS" denotes a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver design concept that combines relatively simple, lightweight, low-power-consumption hardware with portable, efficient software. The power demand of a microGPS receiver can be made low because it is designed to sample sparsely; that is, to...