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Information Technology

Ballistic Filter for GPS and Accelerometer Measurements

Ballistic filtering describes the dynamic equations that can be used to form Extended Kalman Filters (EKF) for the estimation of a projectile’s trajectory. The steps associated with initialization and implementing an EKF are demonstrated through a specific task. The performance of an EKF...

Briefs
Electronics & Computers

Procedure to Determine and Correct for Transmission Line Resistances for Direct-Current, On-Wafer Measurements

Resistances of tenths of ohms to several ohms in transmission lines have been measured in laboratory systems from the power supply to...

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Briefs
Electronics & Computers

Channel Field Effect Transistors

Narrow bandgap semiconductors offer high carrier mobilities and low contact resistances, while wide bandgap semiconductors offer high breakdown voltages. A series of heterojunction transistors has been investigated and proved to be effective for improving both speed and power output. These devices include double...

Briefs
RF & Microwave Electronics

Outdoor Synthetic Aperture Acoustic Ground Target Measurements

A novel outdoor synthetic aperture acoustic (SAA) system consists of a microphone and loudspeaker traveling along a 6.3-meter rail system. This is an extension of a prior indoor...

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Briefs
Physical Sciences

Portable, Rapid-Test Fuel Tank Leak Detection System

In 1988, the EPA issued Underground Storage Tank (UST) regulations for fuel storage in order to implement monthly monitoring and annual tightness testing. Monthly monitoring requires that the...

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Briefs
Electronics & Computers

Self-Aware Computing

This project performed an initial exploration of a new concept for computer system design called Self-Aware Computing. A self-aware computer leverages a variety of hardware and software techniques to automatically adapt and...

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Briefs
Photonics/Optics

Computational Photonics in Laser Communications Through Clouds

This work explored the concept of creating a partially coherent laser beam consisting of an array of spatially overlapping or separated Gaussian beams with possible individual...

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Briefs
Materials

Fire Resistance of Geopolymer Concretes

Geopolymer concrete has been proposed as an alternative to Portland cement concrete in applications requiring high degrees of fire resistance, because the intrinsic chemistry of the geopolymer binder does...

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Briefs
Materials

Tomographic Electrical Resistance-Based Damage Sensing in Nano-Engineered Composite Structures

Advanced composite materials are increasingly replacing metals in the aerospace industry as they offer weight-saving improvements such as high...

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Briefs
Photonics/Optics

Uncooled Tunable LWIR Microbolometers

Uncooled infrared detectors have significant potential capabilities that have been little explored. Micro-machined uncooled detectors with tunable spectral characteristics across the long-wave infrared...

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Briefs
Physical Sciences

Fluid Helmet Liner for Protection Against Blast-Induced Traumatic Brain Injury

An Advanced Combat Helmet liner design uses the novel idea of including filler materials inside channels in the liner. An energy-absorbing foam was selected for the main liner structure, and several filler material candidates of widely varying properties are being...

Briefs
Physical Sciences

Performance of Steel Stud Walls Subjected to Blast Loads

Construction trends have brought about an increase in the use of cold-formed steel studs in Air Force facilities. These steel stud walls have significant potential for mitigating large...

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Briefs
Mechanical & Fluid Systems

Designing a Sensorless Torque Estimator for Direct Torque Control of an Induction Motor

Induction motors often are the preferred choice among industrial motors due to the modern power electronics that improve their speed control. Vitally...

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Briefs
Photonics/Optics

Development of GaN-Based Nanostructure Photon Emitters

Gallium nitride (GaN)-based wide bandgap semiconductors are very important material systems for fabrication of photon emitters in a wide range of wavelengths. In particular, the light emitters in ultraviolet (UV), blue, and green wavelengths have been developed and demonstrated in recent years....

Briefs
Physical Sciences

Through-the-Wall Small Weapon Detection Based on Polarimetric Radar Techniques

Detecting concealed small weapons carried by people has received significant interest from law enforcement agencies as well as the military, most frequently for...

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Briefs
Electronics & Computers

A Bistable Microelectronic Circuit for Sensing an Extremely Low Electric Field

Bistable systems are prevalently found in many sensor systems. It is well established that a well-designed coupling scheme, together with an appropriate choice of initial conditions, can induce oscillations (i.e. periodic switching between stable fixed points) in...

Briefs
Physical Sciences

Fiber-Optic Seismic Sensor for Unattended Ground Sensing

Seismic military sensors are required to be robust, reliable, compact, and easy to install and operate to be effective in the battlefield environment. Three types of sensor technologies...

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Briefs
Electronics & Computers

Reflected Signal Analysis

Forensic characterization of a wireless device is useful in many applications. An example of this is in the testing of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Part 15 devices that must adhere to strict guidelines with...

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Briefs
Photonics/Optics

Threshold Voltage Tuning of Metal-Gate MOSFETs Using an Excimer Laser

This work presents a localized method for tuning the threshold voltages (Vt) of multilayer metal-gate metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) devices with a spatial area theoretically limited by the wavelength of the laser beam. This technique allows an...

Briefs
Manufacturing & Prototyping

Solution Deposition Methods for Carbon Nanotube Field-Effect Transistors

Extensive research has been done on carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNTFETs), which may revolutionize electronics. Single-walled carbon nano-tubes (SWNTs) act as...

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Briefs
Manufacturing & Prototyping

Micro-Propulsion Devices Made of Low-Temperature Co-Fired Ceramics

In the satellite industry, the trend is towards decreasing the size of satellites and clustering of small satellites. Technological advancements in microelectronics have made it more economical to launch a cluster of satellites with a single vehicle rather than the traditional one...

Briefs
Sensors/Data Acquisition

Analysis of Clustering Tools for Moving Target Indication

Current and future forces operating in urban environments need the capability to detect slow-moving personnel inside buildings. To accomplish this, a time-domain approach was developed that uses a low-frequency, ultra-wideband (UWB) radar with a transmit pulse capable of penetrating through...

Briefs
Photonics/Optics

Novel Wavelength Standards in the Near Infrared

The goal of this work was to develop a new class of portable optical frequency references based on sub-Doppler spectroscopy inside gas-filled, hollow-core photonic bandgap (PBG) optical fiber. The change in line width with core size, and narrower transitions inside a new “kagome” structured...

Briefs
Photonics/Optics

Power Enhancement of a Rubidium Vapor Laser with a Master Oscillator Power Amplifier

The concept of alkali lasers was first suggested by Schalow and Townes in the late 1950s. In the 1970s, photo-dissociation of several of the alkali salts produced lasers with wavelengths ranging from the visible to the far infrared. Thirty years later, diode-pumped...

Briefs
Materials

Real-Time Intelligent Chemical and Biological Nanosensors on a Flexible Platform

The objectives of this research are to examine the feasibility of real-time sensing of chemical and biological species by using the unique materials and electronic...

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Briefs
Physical Sciences

Liquid-Crystal-Based Optical Phased Array for Steering Lasers

A paper describes the basic design and concepts of tunable liquid-crystal polarization gratings with a nematic liquid crystal (LC) optical phase plate, with a large, continuous in- plane gradient that is variable, and its application to a beam steering device with high efficiency.

Briefs
Information Technology

Considering Software Protection for Embedded Systems

Given the current trend of reprogrammable embedded devices within the Department of Defense and industry, attention needs to be refocused on the benefits or measurability of software protection applied to this domain. Modern reconfigurable embedded systems consider circuits as software and the...

Briefs
Electronics & Computers

Field-Programmable Gate Array-Based Software-Defined Radio

There are existing wideband communications systems that were built using field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based software-defined radio (SDR) designs. Despite the inherent advantages of these systems, some are functionally restricted by limited output bandwidth.

Briefs
Information Technology

FPGA-Based System for Tracking Digital Information Transmitted Via Peer-to-Peer Protocols

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking has changed the way users search for, send, and receive digital information over the Internet. Instead of relying on...

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