Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Gurdip Singh / TinyOS is an operating system designed for wireless embedded sensor network which supports the component based development language called Nesc. Wireless sensor network are becoming increasingly popular and are being used in various applications including surveillance applications related to object tracking. Wireless sensor devices called motes can generate an event in the network whenever there is some object moving in its vicinity. This project aims to develop an application which detects the path information of object moving in the sensor field by capturing the order of events occurs in the network. This application builds a logical topology called DAG (Directed acyclic graph) between the motes in the network which is similar to the tree topology where a child can have multiple parents which are in communication range and a level closer to the root. Using a DAG, motes can communicate efficiently to order the events occurring in the sensor field. The root of the DAG is the base station which receives all the events occurred in the network and orders them based on the information it has from previous events received. Every event occurring in the network is assigned a time stamp and is identified by a tuple (mote_id, timestamp) which describes that the mote with identity id has detected the object with the timestamp, and ordering all such events based on the timestamps we get the path information. There are two time stamping algorithms written in this project. In the first time stamping algorithm, whenever any event occurs, it updates the timestamp information of the entire neighboring mote in the field and when the object enters in the detection range of neighboring mote of previous detected mote, it assigns the new timestamp. The second time stamping algorithm just send the message to the parent and it passes on to its parent until the message is received at the base station, and base station itself assigns the timestamps based the event on first come first serve basis. The application is tested by displaying the path information received and ordered at the base station.

Published Article / While the adoption rate of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is increasing, mass-market adoption will not be achieved until a few major challenges are addressed. These challenges are: privacy, security and costs from the end-user's view point and limited power supply to the tag from the engineering perspective. We discuss the research efforts aimed at addressing these challenges. We focus our attention on research in: RFID privacy and security, antennas, polymer electronics-based RFID devices, power management circuits and techniques, and efficient RF spectrum utilization. We conclude by drawing attention to three additional areas that we believe are in need of more research.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-21, 2004 / Town & Country Resort, San Diego, California / This paper will present the design of a network used to receive and record sensor data and provide voice communications between a flight controller and the pilot of an aircraft undergoing flight testing in remote areas. The network utilizes a completely self-contained mobile tracking subsystem to receive and relay the sensor data and cockpit voice in real-time over a geostationary satellite. In addition to the aircraft tracking and data/voice relay functions, the system also provides local data recording at the mobile station, telephone and intercom connectivity between the mobile station and the control center, and remote equipment setup via the satellite link.

ITC/USA 2010 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Sixth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 25-28, 2010 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / This document is focused on the examination of the tracking angular error due to the radio refraction for the target in low altitude of less than 5km and in low elevation angle. The real measured data using the GPS and the tracking systems of C- and S-band frequency in NARO Space centre, Korea are used for the analysis. The analysis shows couple of conclusions on the radio refraction effects; there are angular errors due to the radio refraction which is not to be neglected comparing the accuracy of the tracking system but to be considered for the precise measurement of the target position. Also, the refraction errors are dependent on the target altitude, but not on the frequency.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 17-20, 1994 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / A remotely-operated ground telemetry tracking and receiving station is described. The station, operating in a space-diversity mode, is capable of reception and tracking both at VHF and at UHF. The station can be configured and operated from a distance of 240 km using a wide-band land data link. Uplink command at VHF is included as part of the station.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 27-30, 1997 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / GLONASS is similar to GPS in many aspects such as system configuration, navigation mechanism, signal structure, etc.. There exists the possibility of receiving and processing GLONASS signals with GPS technology. The frequency plan of the GLONASS system is different from that of GPS. This makes the front-end of GLONASS receiver more complicated. The work here manifests our initial effort in GLONASS receiving. A design scheme is proposed of a C/A code GLONASS receiver.

This thesis is a systematic investigation of preparatory reorienting of task-relevant spatial attention. Task switching experiments typically report a performance overhead when the current task is different to that performed on the previous trial relative to when the task repeats. This ‘switch cost’ tends to reduce as participants are given more time to prepare (consistent with an active reconfiguration process) but a ‘residual’ switch cost usually remains even at very long preparation intervals (often interpreted as evidence of carryover of response selection parameters from the previous trial which are immune to preparation). Although attentional selection of perceptual attributes is often considered to be part of task-set and is included in some models of task-set control, little research has investigated the dynamics of this component in detail. Over a series of seven experiments in which tasks were consistently mapped to screen locations, eye-tracking was used to systematically investigate task-relevant spatial selection of perceptual attributes during the preparation interval and early after stimulus onset. Experiment 1 revealed a switch-induced delay in appropriate attention orientation and a measure of ‘attentional inertia’ which could not be explained by task-independent re-orienting to locations or low-level oculomotor phenomena but were markers of task-relevant spatial selection. Experiment 2 provided a sensitive measure of both of these attentional handicaps and demonstrated that they both contribute to the switch cost (including its residual component). Although attentional inertia reduced with preparation, both handicaps were present at the longest preparation intervals. The constancy of the delay in attending to the relevant attribute reflects the effort to re-allocate attention, rather than peculiarities of spatial orienting when the cue and stimulus are presented near-simultaneously on trials with short cue-stimulus intervals. The presence of attentional inertia in blocks with long preparation intervals suggested some component of inertia immune to preparation (though see Experiments 5 and 6 below). Experiments 3 and 4 investigated the extent to which attentional selection can be decoupled from other task-set components. Cues which explicitly provided location information reduced (or eliminated) the attentional effects found in Experiment 2 indicating that attentional selection can be decoupled from other task-set components. However, Experiment 3 found that the ‘natural’ state is for attentional selection to be coupled at least to a degree (and accessed via) task-set. Experiment 5 combined eye-tracking with ERPs to investigate the relative order of attentional selection and reconfiguration of other task-set components. A well-documented ERP marker of task-set preparation always followed onset of the first fixation on the currently relevant stimulus element indicating that (at least some) task-set components are reconfigured in a serial order with spatial selection preceding other components (e.g., loading of S-R rules or other parameters into working memory). Experiments 6 and 7 investigated the nature of attentional inertia. In Experiment 6 participants were given ultimate control over the duration of the preparation interval which eliminated attentional inertia (at least as indexed by preferential fixation of the previously relevant element on switch trials). In Experiment 7 the stimulus comprised three items which were from perceptually distinct classes (digits, letters, objects) to investigate whether the presence of task-specific features would elicit extra attentional inertia and whether early spatial selection was effective enough to block the processing of task-irrelevant features once the stimulus was presented. Although there was some evidence that the previously relevant stimulus element ‘captured’ attention, this tendency was modest in the fixations and absent in performance measures (response congruence effects).

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 29-November 02, 1990 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / TIW Systems has developed a modern, compact, modular, antenna controller (ACU) for telemetry, tracking, and communications antennas. The controller combines the functions of an antenna control unit, a position conversion/display chassis, and a polarization control unit. By using plug-in cards, a tracking receiver, autophasing control unit, tracking synthesizer, and other functions can be added. Depending on the requirements, the tracking receiver can be a simple wide-band steptrack receiver, or can be a full function phase-locked-loop (PLL) autotrack receiver. In the past, all this capability would have taken a large portion of an entire equipment rack. The unit uses modern microprocessor technology for digitally controlling the position and rate of the antenna. Advanced tracking modes and remote control can be added by connecting an external computer (PTIC) to one of the ACU’s serial ports. The PTIC also provides a user friendly operator interface through the use of high resolution color graphics and easy to understand menus.

No description available.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 29-November 02, 1990 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Global Positioning System (GPS) translator signals have been used to track U.S Navy Trident missile test launches for the past 15 years. Absolute position accuracies of better than 20 meters in real-time and 8 meters in post mission have been consistently demonstrated. Flight qualified GPS translators 40 cubic inches in size have been developed for the U.S. Army Exoatmospheric Re-entry Vehicle Interceptor Subsystem (ERIS) program and are currently available for use by U.S. and allied government test ranges. More widespread use of GPS translators is constrained, however, by the great expense and size of the custom ground equipment currently used to acquire GPS translator signals and compute the position and velocity of the vehicle. To address this problem, the U.S. Air Force Western Space and Missile Center (WSMC) placed 3S under contract to design a lower-cost GPS translator processor based mainly on using commercial telemetry equipment. This paper describes how a working prototype was constructed to demonstrate the feasibility of the Translator Record and Interface System (TRIS). This prototype shows that TRIS can be built from a combination of commercially-available telemetry equipment, GPS equipment developed for the U.S. Air Force Range Applications Joint Program Office (RAJPO), and a few elements of custom equipment.