Abstract:
An embedded crossed bow tie antenna for a broad beam width and a 5:1 pattern bandwidth includes lossy material located underneath the distal ends of the bow ties to lower VSWR to below 3:1 across the entire band and to decrease nulls for more uniform antenna patterns at the high frequency end. In one embodiment, the vertical plates lower the low frequency cutoff of the antenna. DC shorting the low end of adjacent vertical plates together increases the capacitive coupling between the vertical plates and the base of the cavity to lower the low frequency cutoff and suppresses mode coupling to allow the antenna to retain its clean radiation patterns at the high end while at the same time reducing coupling between bow tie elements. In one embodiment, adding wedges of ground plane between bow tie elements reduces coupling and helps in the match and patterns at high frequencies.
Abstract:
A calibration system is provided for calibrating frequency domain reflectometers in the field by using both the scattering parameters of the multi-port junction determined at the factory and changing the offset and gain terms used in generating a complex reflection coefficient by using internal calibrated loads so that heavy, cumbersome external calibrated transmission lines are not required. In one embodiment the internal calibrated loads include RLC circuits and in another embodiment the internal calibrated loads include attenuators. Further, retesting or recalibration does not necessitate reconnecting the cable under test, which may remain connected to the reflectometer’s test port throughout the procedure.
Abstract:
An underwater acoustic projector comprising one or more cylindrical shell segments (8), each shell segment (8) having an even number of drivers (10) mounted therein, and the method of manufacturing said projector. The shell segments (8) preferably are formed with a longitudinal slot (14) and have arcuate segments (16), preferably of a dielectric material extending along the sides of the slot (14) for retaining the drivers (10) within the shell segments (8). The combined lengths of the driver is between 70% and 90% of the shell segment (8) length.
Abstract:
In a communications or jamming system, accurate timing of the transmission of digitally processed signals is accomplished through the use of standard off-the-shelf components. In order to eliminate the need for high-cost, difficult to develop, specific digital hardware or real-time synchronous software not available from the standard off-the-shelf components, the output from the non-real time components is coupled to a real-time interface (70) that assures nanosecond timing accuracy regardless of timing errors introduced by the off-the-shelf components. In one embodiment, the signals to be transmitted are digitized and then packetized, with the data to be transmitted reconstructed using non-real time digital processing. In order to establish the exact time for transmission, the packet is given a time stamp (52) in the form of a header which indicates the exact time at which the packet is to be transmitted by the communications system, with the packet with header being transmitted to a storage buffer (60), the output of which is coupled to a real-time interface including a precise time output gate (62), the timing of which is controlled by a precision time reference having nano-second accuracy.
Abstract:
A multi-user turbo decoder combining multi-user detection and forward error correction decoding is disclosed in which randomly ordered indices (19) are assigned to interfering users before a decoding tree is constructed in the multi-user decoder for each symbol interval for every iteration and for each new block of data. By building the decoding tree in this manner for each symbol interval, a reduced complexity search is more likely to include paths (and nodes) in the tree containing the correct value for the channel symbols. All users (16) thus share in the benefit of root level placement in the decoding tree (14). In an alternative embodiment of the invention only one decoding pass (16) is accomplished and there is no re-construction of the decoding tree based on further random index ordering (29) for iterative decoding. No modification to the transmitted signaling method is needed.
Abstract:
A system for calibrating airborne direction finding antenna arrays eliminates the problem of trying to maintain a constant depression angle when flying an airplane directly over a calibration antenna to collect deep depression angle data. The deep depression angle data necessary for calibration is provided by data from a scale model (68) of the aircraft having a direction-finding array which simulates the actual direction-finding array on the aircraft. In order to collect deep depression angle data, the model is pivoted through 360 ° while maintaining a controlled depression angle. Thus, it is unnecessary for calibration to actually fly a plane to attempt to obtain deep depression angle measurements. In the subject system, only a single depression set of data is required from the aircraft. Thus, with the exception of baseline shallow depression angle data from this plane, the calibration data comes strictly from the scale model, which is much more easily obtained. Optimization techniques are used in which a set of data is collected from the airplane at one shallow depression angle which is used with that data collected from the scale model at the same shallow depression angle to derive a complex set of optimized weights that are then applied to the data collected from the model at the remainder of the depression angles to obtain the appropriate database for use on this aircraft for direction finding. In so doing, the aircraft need only be flown to establish data at a relatively shallow depression angle which can be easily collected by an aircraft flying in circles or banana pattern at some distance from the calibration antenna.
Abstract:
A system is provided for use with a multi-user detector MUD, which dramatically decreases the processing time for separating out interfering transmissions from a number of users by eliminating from each processing iteration consideration of those bit estimates for which the probability or estimate of their value exceeds a predetermined threshold and can therefore be declared "certain". In a Turbo MUD environment in which the output of the MUD is coupled back to the MUD (14) through an error correction system (28), the output of the error correction is thresholded (30) such that those bit estimates having probabilities or estimates greater than a predetermined threshold are assigned a quantized value and are eliminated from further processing by the MUD.
Abstract:
An algorithmic approaches that can be implemented in software/firmware/hardware that filters out stable PRI patterns detected within a system that is prosecuting against radar based transmissions are disclosed. The algorithms allow downstream computing assets to concentrate their limited resources on the more complex emitter PRI pattern types. Thus, a portion (e.g., stable signals) of the pulse deinterleave and PRI identification problem is solved without requiring the more computationally expensive processing. The disclosed algorithms can be employed, for example, in electronic support measures (ESM) systems, electronic intelligence (ELINT) systems, and/or a electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems. The algorithms employ linear detection, linear regression, or a combination of linear detection and linear regression, thereby providing a "dual voting" scheme that decreases the occurrence of false positives. Other algorithmic approaches can be used as well in a multi-voting scheme that considers PRI estimates from distinct analysis types.
Abstract:
An antenna with first and second spaced radiating elements extending from a vertex at respective first ends and diverging from each other in a direction outward from the vertex to respective second ends. Each radiating element second end is connected to a first end of a terminating element through a coupler. The second end of each terminating element is connected to a common ground plane.
Abstract:
A modified V-groove structure in a double clad laser system permits multiple emitter side pumping of a fiber laser. In one embodiment, a stack of at least five emitters have individual outputs coupled into the inner cladding, with as many sources as desired coupled to the fiber to raise the cumulative pumping power to in excess of 2-KW, thus to achieve a 1-KW fiber laser.