ITC/USA 2006 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Second Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 23-26, 2006 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / Many satellite payloads require wide-band channels for transmission of large amounts of data to users on the ground. These channels typically have substantial distortions, including bandlimiting distortions and high power amplifier (HPA) nonlinearities that cause substantial degradation of bit error rate performance compared to additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) scenarios. An adaptive equalization algorithm has been selected as the solution to improving bit error rate performance in the presence of these channel distortions. This paper describes the design and implementation of an adaptive baseband equalizer (ABBE) utilizing the latest FPGA technology. Implementation of the design was arrived at by first constructing a high fidelity channel simulation model, which incorporates worst-case signal impairments over the entire data link. All of the modem digital signal processing functions, including multirate carrier and symbol synchronization, are modeled, in addition to the adaptive complex baseband equalizer. Different feedback and feed-forward tap combinations are considered as part of the design optimization.

Advanced embedded systems can consist of many sensors, actuators and processors that are deployed on one or several boards, while having a demand of interacting with each other and sharing resources. Communication between different components usually has strict timing constraints. There is thus a strong need to provide solutions for time critical communication. This thesis focuses on both the support of real-time services over standard switched Ethernet networks and the improvement of systems' real-time characteristics, such as reducing delay and jitter in processors and on communication links. Switched Ethernet has been chosen in this work because of its major advantages in industry; it supports higher bit-rates than most other current LAN (Local Area Network) technologies, including field buses, still at a low cost. We propose using a star network topology with a single Ethernet switch. Each node is connected to a separate port of the switch via a full-duplex link, thereby eliminating collisions. A solid real-time communication protocol for switched Ethernet networks is proposed in the thesis, including a real-time layer between the Ethernet layer and the TCP/IP suite. The network has the capability of supporting both real-time and non real-time traffic and assuring adaptation to the surrounding protocol standards. Most embedded systems work in a dynamic environment, where the precise behavior of the network traffic can usually not be predicted. To support real-time services, we have chosen the Earliest Deadline scheduling algorithm (EDF) because of its optimality, high efficiency and suitability for being used in adaptive schemes. To be able to increase the amount of guaranteed real-time traffic, the notion of Asymmetric Deadline Partitioning Scheme (ADPS) is introduced. ADPS allows distribution of the end-to-end deadline of a message, sent from any source node in the network to any destination node via the switch, into two sub-deadlines, one for each hop according to the load of the physical link that it must traverse. For the EDF scheduling algorithm, the feasibility test is one of the most important techniques that provides us with information about whether or not the real-time traffic can be guaranteed by the network. With the same computational complexity as the feasibility test, a method has been developed to compute the minimum EDF-feasible deadline for a real-time task. The importance of this method in real-time applications lies in that it can be effectively used to reduce the response times of specific control activities or limit their input-output jitter. To allow more flexibility in the control of delay and jitter in real-time systems, a general approach for reducing task deadlines according to the requirements of individual tasks has been developed. The method allows the user to specify a deadline reduction factor for each task in order to better exploit the available slack according to the tasks' actual requirements. / <p>Ingår även i serien: Technical report. D / Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, 1653-1787 ; 28</p>

This thesis investigates different methods that can be used for analyzing network performance and,ultimately, can be used for measuring the convergence time of ring coupled networks. As of today,many networks are often run with extra links, serving as backup links in case any that of the mainlinks would go down. To operate networks with backup links in layer 2 and layer 3, specific re-routing protocols such as RIP and OSPF are used in order to calculate a feasible path through anetwork when a network state changes. Depending on different implementations of the protocolsand the hardware used, the convergence times can vary substantially, which means measuring thenetwork performance is a very important part when developing a network solution. To executenetwork tests, a packet engine suite is used consisting of a network traffic generator that is used forcreating a packet stream, as well as a traffic receiver that fetches the packets sent. Various types ofengines can be used including Linux based, real-time operating systems based and bare-metal basedsolutions. From these different types of engines, a few tools are chosen and investigated on differentproperties including performance and usability. It was found that Tshark (Linux, RT-Linux based),USPI (Raspberry Pi bare metal), FreeRTOS (Raspberry Pi based), Arduino and PKTgen (Linuxkernel based) were the most suitable approaches to be used for testing. The test parameters includetesting the gaps between packets, maximum jitter, average jitter and packets sent per second. Thesetests revealed that an IXIA solution was slightly more accurate when used as a receiving end sinceit produced less jitter, however this difference could only be noticed in a micro second range. Itwas also revealed that it produced slightly less jitter than the other packet generators, also here onlynoticeable in a microsecond range. Thus it can be concluded that IXIA is not much superior any ofthe close to hardware solutions. The executed network tests revealed that the Westermo developedlayer 2 protocol FRNT generated less network convergence time and less packet losses than thecommonly used RSTP protocol. Similar tests against the layer 3 protocols revealed that RIP wasmuch faster than OSPF and it also lost less packets. Finally it is concluded that there is no needto buy an expensive network testing suite to test the convergence time of a network. Instead, anetwork testing suite can be developed with minimal funding.

This project presents a mechanism for instrumentation of secure VoIP calls. The experiments were run under different network conditions and security systems. VoIP services such as Google Talk, Express Talk and Skype were under test. The project allowed analysis of the voice quality of the VoIP services based on the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) values generated by Perceptual valuation of Speech Quality (PESQ). The quality of the audio streams produced were subjected to end-to-end delay, jitter, packet loss and extra processing in the networking hardware and end devices due to Internetworking Layer security or Transport Layer security implementations. The MOS values were mapped to Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality for wideband (PESQ-WB) scores. From these PESQ-WB scores, the graphs of the mean of 10 runs and box and whisker plots for each parameter were drawn. Analysis on the graphs was performed in order to deduce the quality of each VoIP service. The E-model was used to predict the network readiness and Common vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) was used to predict the network vulnerabilities. The project also provided the mechanism to measure the throughput for each test case. The overall performance of each VoIP service was determined by PESQ-WB scores, CVSS scores and the throughput. The experiment demonstrated the relationship among VoIP performance, VoIP security and VoIP service type. The experiment also suggested that, when compared to an unsecure IPIP tunnel, Internetworking Layer security like IPSec ESP or Transport Layer security like OpenVPN TLS would improve a VoIP security by reducing the vulnerabilities of the media part of the VoIP signal. Morever, adding a security layer has little impact on the VoIP voice quality.

No description available.

In this dissertation, we conduct a census and assessment of the nearest young Sun-like stars and investigate the potential for finding giant planets orbiting spotted stars using the radial velocity (RV) method at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. Based in part on new spectroscopic measurements conducted here, we have assembled a complete list of 129 young (<150 >Myr), nearby Sun-like stars and their fundamental parameters, including rotational and multiplicity information. We also provide a statistical analysis of their stellar parameters, including projected rotational velocity and inclination. Sixteen of these stars have no close companions and have low projected rotational velocities (vsini/s) that are ideal for precision RV planet searches. Seven of these rotate nearly edge-on and are ideal targets for upcoming transiting planet searches, assuming low obliquity. We conduct precision RV planet search of 7 young Sun-like stars using the TRES spectrograph, mounted on the 1.5-m Tillinghast Reflector at the Fred L. Whipple Observatory, and with the SOPHIE spectrograph, mounted on the 1.93-m Telescope at the Observatoire de Haute Provence; we achieve a precision of 10 m/s for both. Four stars are identified as having larger RV variations that are periodic, possibly caused by an orbiting companion. However, the RV variations are correlated with asymmetries in the spectral absorption features, which instead suggests that the variations are caused by spots. Nevertheless our observations provide new independent measures of the rotation periods of these stars. Through this analysis we tentatively confirm the planetary companion around BD+20 1790 in the presence of activity. We additionally investigate the use of comparing red orders of the optical spectrum to the blue orders in order to distinguish spots from planets; we find that this method can be effective for observations that span the full wavelength range of the optical. We also investigate our detection limits at optical wavelengths and find that we are sensitive to over 90% of short period giant planets. Next, we assemble the stellar jitter measurements of our stars with previous studies of all Sun-like stars younger than 1 Gyr to investigate how stellar jitter declines with stellar age. We find that stellar jitter decreases with stellar age as t^(0.53±0.13), similar to the relationship between stellar rotation period and stellar age. The implication is that it will be diffcult to find planets orbiting stars younger than 100 Myr without using techniques that mitigate star spot noise. Furthermore, we present a near-infrared RV search for giant planets orbiting 8 stars observed with CSHELL at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF). Because of the limited wavelength coverage (29 ̊A) and older (1980s) detector technology, the achieved precision of 200 m/s inhibits finding the majority of exoplanets, but is nevertheless sufficient to identify short-period brown dwarfs for these stars. We also analyze our detection limits at IR wavelengths and find that we are only sensitive to roughly 50% of short period giant planets. Finally, we present a new orbital solution for V835 Her, a spectroscopic binary with a 3 day orbital period.

The expanding growth of mobile products and services has led to various wireless communication standards that employ different spectrum bands and protocols to provide data, voice or video communication services. Software deffned radio and cognitive radio are emerging techniques that can dynamically integrate various standards to provide seamless global coverage, including global roaming across geographical regions, and interfacing with different wireless networks. In software deffned radio and cognitive radio, one of the most critical RF blocks that need to exhibit frequency agility is the phase lock loop (PLL) frequency synthesizer. In order to access various standards, the frequency synthesizer needs to have wide frequency tuning range, fast tuning speed, and low phase noise and frequency spur. The traditional analog charge pump frequency synthesizer circuit design is becoming diffcult due to the continuous down-scalings of transistor feature size and power supply voltage. The goal of this project was to develop an all digital phase locked loop (ADPLL) as the alternative solution technique in RF transceivers by taking advantage of digital circuitry's characteristic features of good scalability, robustness against process variation and high noise margin. The targeted frequency bands for our ADPLL design included 880MHz-960MHz, 1.92GHz-2.17GHz, 2.3GHz-2.7GHz, 3.3GHz-3.8GHz and 5.15GHz-5.85GHz that are used by wireless communication standards such as GSM, UMTS, bluetooth, WiMAX and Wi-Fi etc. This project started with the system level model development for characterizing ADPLL phase noise, fractional spur and locking speed. Then an on-chip jitter detector and parameter adapter was designed for ADPLL to perform self-tuning and self-calibration to accomplish high frequency purity and fast frequency locking in each frequency band. A novel wide band DCO is presented for multi-band wireless application. The proposed wide band adaptive ADPLL was implemented in the IBM 0.13µm CMOS technology. The phase noise performance, the frequency locking speed as well as the tuning range of the digitally controlled oscillator was assessed and agrees well with the theoretical analysis.

Ce travail de thèse se concentre sur la caractérisation et la correction de la gigue temporelle de lasers ultrabrefs, c'est-à-dire avec une durée d'impulsion sub-picoseconde, pompés par diode et avec un milieu à gain dopé à l'Ytterbium. Ce type de source laser a bénéficié d'un développement industriel rapide depuis le début des années 2000 et a trouvé de très nombreuses applications, notamment dans le domaine scientifique pour des expériences résolues en temps (FELs, accélérateurs de particules, OPAs...). Dans ce type d’applications, la réduction de la gigue des impulsions permet d’accéder à de meilleures résolutions temporelles et permet d’observer des phénomènes physiques extrêmement brefs.Dans ce travail, la gigue d'oscillateurs lasers ultrabrefs à verrouillage de mode passif a été corrigée et caractérisée en générant un signal d'erreur par photo-détection directe d'une part et par corrélation croisée optique d'autre part. La correction de la gigue temporelle par corrélation croisée optique permet d'obtenir une gigue résiduelle inférieure à 5fs, de l'ordre de la durée d'un cycle optique, avec des oscillateurs compacts et industriels. Une gigue résiduelle de ce niveau permet d’accéder à des expériences résolues en temps exigeantes en termes de stabilités temporelles des sources de lumière utilisée, par exemple une expérience d’interaction lumière-matière de type pompe-sonde avec une source laser à électrons libres.Un nouvel instrument basé sur la corrélation statistique des signaux de gigue générés par deux canaux de corrélations croisées optiques a été mis en place. Un tel instrument a permis de caractériser complètement la gigue temporelle d'oscillateurs à des fréquences de Fourier supérieures à la dizaine de kiloHertz lasers ultrabref en atteignant un plancher de bruit sub-zeptoseconde. La gigue additive d'amplificateurs lasers ultrabrefs a également été caractérisée par corrélation croisée optique, cela afin d'acquérir une compréhension globale de la gigue introduite par une chaîne laser ultrabrève amplifiée.Les mesures effectuées ont permis d’analyser les origines physiques de la gigue dans un système laser ultrabref. Ces résultats permettront à terme d’améliorer la correction de la gigue sur les systèmes industriels étudiés ainsi que de développer de nouvelles sources laser ultrabrèves intrinsèquement moins bruyantes. Une telle étude expérimentale pourra également servir de support pour éventuellement enrichir le modèle théorique des perturbations dans un laser ultrabref. / The main scope of this PhD work is to characterize and reduce the timing jitter of optical pulses with sub-picosecond duration, emitted by diode-pumped ultrafsat lasers with Ytterbium doped gain media. Such laser sources have been rapidly enhanced by a high-grade and efficient industrial development, giving access to numerous novel applications, especially in the fields of applied physics and chemistry with time-resolved experiments based on interaction between light and matter. In this latter topic resides a constant need to minimize the laser pulse train timing jitter in order to access physical phenomena with extremely short timescales such as electrons recombination.Two main detection techniques have been studied to characterize the timing jitter from passively modelocked laser oscillators. The first technique is based on direct photo-detection in the microwave domain whilst the second technique makes use of the balanced optical cross-correlation. Residual timing jitter from industrial compact laser oscillators has been reduced below 5fs, close to an optical cycle period. This performance makes the laser oscillators produced by Amplitude-Systemes already suitable for challenging time-resolved pump-probe experiments, in the presence for example of a free electron laser source.Timing jitter analysis has been enhanced by studying the cross-spectrum from jitter signals generated from two balanced optical cross-correlators. This technique allowed the entire characterization of the timing jitter density spectrum from laser oscillators above the ten-kiloHertz Fourier frequency with a sub-zeptosecond noise floor. Additive timing jitter from ultrafast laser amplifiers has also been studied with optical cross-correlation and gives a global comprehension of the timing jitter from a complete high-energy ultrafast laser chain.The collected measurments will be conducive to design a more adapted and performant timing synchronization system for industrial laser sources. A better knowledge of the non-trivial jitter sources, dependent on the laser parameters, will also allow to design intrinsically low-noise new laser sources based on the Ytterbium gain media. The cross-spectrum technique developed could be of use to characterize other laser technologies and to investigate the theoretical perturbation model of ultrafast lasers with a better experimental insight.

As redes de distribuição de sinais de tempo - ou redes de sincronismo - têm a tarefa de distribuir os sinais de fase e freqüência ao longo de relógios geograficamente dispersos. Este tipo de rede é parte integrante de inúmeras aplicações e sistemas em Engenharia, tais como sistemas de comunicação e transmissão de dados, navegação e rastreamento, sistemas de monitoração e controle de processos, etc. Devido ao baixo custo e facilidade de implementação, a topologia mestre-escravo tem sido predominante na implementação das redes. Recentemente, devido ao surgimento das redes sem fio - wireless - de conexões dinâmicas, e ao aumento da freqüência de operação dos circuitos integrados, topologias complexas, tais como as redes mutuamente conectadas e small world têm ganhado importância. Essencialmente cada nó da rede é composto por um PLL - Phase-Locked Loop - cuja função é sincronizar um oscilador local a um sinal de entrada. Devido ao seu comportamentamento não-linear, o PLL apresenta um jitter com o dobro da freqüência de livre curso dos osciladores, prejudicando o desempenho das redes. Dessa forma, este trabalho tem como objetivo o estudo analítico e por simulação das condições que garantam a existência de estados síncronos, e do comportamento do jitter de fase nas redes de sincronismo. São analisadas as topologias mestre-escravo e mutuamente conectada para o PLL analógico clássico. / Network synchronization deals with the problem of distributing time and fre- quency among spatially remote locations. This kind of network is a constituent element of countless aplications and systems in Engineering, such as communication and data transmission systems, navigation and position determination, monitoring and process control systems, etc. Due to its low cost and simplicity, the master-slave architec- ture has been widely used. In the last few years, with the growth of the dynamically connected wireless networks and the rising operational frequencies of the integrated cir- cuits, the study of the mutually connected and small world architectures are becoming relevant. Essentially, each node of a synchronization network is constituted by a PLL - Phase-Locked Loop - circuit that must automatically adjust the phase of a local oscillator to the phase of an incoming signal. Because of its nonlinear behavior the PLL presents a phase jitter with the double of the free running frequency of the oscillators, impairing the network performance. Thus, this work aims to study, both analytically and by simulation, the existence conditions of the synchronous states and the behavior of the double frequency jitter in the synchronization networks. Specifically the One Way Master Slave (OWMS) and Mutually Connected (MC) network architectures for classical analogical PLLs are analyzed.

[Truncated abstract] This research addresses endemic problems in the fields of computer graphics and simulation such as jittery motion, spatial scalability, rendering problems such as z-buffer tearing, the repeatability of physics dynamics and numerical error in positional systems. Designers of simulation and computer graphics software tend to map real world navigation rules onto the virtual world, expecting to see equivalent virtual behaviour. After all, if computers are programmed to simulate the real world, it is reasonable to expect the virtual behaviour to correspond. However, in computer simulation many behaviours and other computations show measurable problems inconsistent with realworld experience, particularly at large distances from the virtual world origin. Many of these problems, particularly in rendering, can be imperceptible, so users may be oblivious to them, but they are measurable using experimental methods. These effects, generically termed spatial jitter in this thesis, are found in this study to stem from floating point error in positional parameters such as spatial coordinates. This simulation error increases with distance from the coordinate origin and as the simulation progresses through the pipeline. The most common form of simulation error relevant to this study is spatial error which is found by this thesis to not be calculated, as may be expected, using numerical relative error propagation rules but using the rules of geometry. ... The thesis shows that the thinking behind real-world rules, such as for navigation, has to change in order to properly design for optimal fidelity simulation. Origincentric techniques, formulae, terms, architecture and processes are all presented as one holistic solution in the form of an optimised simulation pipeline. The results of analysis, experiments and case studies are used to derive a formula for relative spatial error that accounts for potential pathological cases. A formula for spatial error propagation is then derived by using the new knowledge of spatial error to extend numerical relative error propagation mathematics. Finally, analytical results are developed to provide a general mathematical expression for maximum simulation error and how it varies with distance from the origin and the number of mathematical operations performed. We conclude that the origin centric approach provides a general and optimal solution to spatial jitter. Along with changing the way one thinks about navigation, process guidelines and formulae developed in the study, the approach provides a new paradigm for positional computing. This paradigm can improve many aspects of computer simulation in areas such as entertainment, visualisation for education, industry, science, or training. Examples are: spatial scalability, the accuracy of motion, interaction and rendering; and the consistency and predictability of numerical computation in physics. This research also affords potential cost benefits through simplification of software design and code. These cost benefits come from some core techniques for minimising position dependent error, error propagation and also the simplifications and from new algorithms that flow naturally out of the core solution.