International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Given the small size of hit-to-kill interceptor test vehicles currently under development, volumetric limitations mandate using the experimental vehicle's telemetry system during vehicle ground level acceptance and environmental testing to gather performance data, in addition to the primary function of successfully gathering and transmitting data during the test flight. In small, lightweight test interceptors, volume and mass become major telemetry system design considerations. In this paper we describe a system engineering approach to determine the key requirements and calculate some of the critical design parameters necessary for the successful design and development of a high data rate wide band FM Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) airborne telemetry system.

The main purpose of this thesis is to estimate the direct path in dense multipath Ultra Wide-Band (UWB) environment. The time-of-arrival (ToA) estimation algorithm used is based on Generalized Maximum-Likelihood (GML) algorithm. Nevertheless, GML algorithm is so time-consuming that the results usually take a very long period of time, and sometimes fail to converge. Hence, the schemes that would improve the algorithm are investigated. In the schemes, the search was executed in sequential form. Two threshold parameters are to be determined¡Xone is about the arrival time of the estimation path while the other is the fading amplitude of the estimation path. The thresholds are determined in order to terminate the sequential algorithm. The determination of thresholds is based on error analysis, including the probability of error and root-mean-square error. The analysis of the probability of error is subject to the probability of false alarm and the probability of miss. However, a trade-off problem on the probability of false alarm and the probability of miss exists in the process of determining thresholds. The thresholds are determined according to the requirement of the probability of error. We propose an improvement scheme for determining the two thresholds. In the proposed scheme, candidate pairs are evaluated within an appropriate range. The root-mean-square error value for each pair of thresholds is calculated. The smallest error, corresponding to the desired thresholds, is chosen for use in ToA estimation. From the simulation results, it is seen that, when SNR falls between -4dB and 16dB, the improvement proposed scheme results has the smaller estimation error.

Master of Science / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Behrooz Mirafzal / The rise of Wide Band Gap (WBG) devices has brought excitement in the field of Power converters. The WBG based converter can operate at the very high frequency and temperature making them ideal to use in harsh environments. The commercialization of WBG devices such as SiC and GaN MOSFETs has made it interesting for power engineering professionals all over the world. The use of WBG devices capable of operating at high switching frequencies reduces the overall system size dramatically with added benefit of improved power quality at high temperature. The main goal of this thesis is to design and test an AC-DC converter based on a SiC power module. The designed rectifier can be considered an active rectifier equipped with a controller to constantly provide feedback for modification of switching signals to get the desired output voltage. The designed active rectifier converts the varying frequency input power supply into rectified DC voltage while keeping the power factor of the system to unity. This thesis covers elementary information on power supply design, switching schemes and design of the controller. System arrangement will provide more light on the use of Six Channel MOSFET Gate Driver from CREE with the overall experimental setup. The experimental analysis will summarize the behavior of the system where information on achieved rectification, effect on the line currents at the generator and concluding power factor representation is described.

This thesis proposes a control system to widen the bandwidth of piezoelectric transducers (PZTs) for vibration energy harvesting while extracting maximum power. A straightforward complex conjugate match achieves maximum power transfer only at a single frequency while requiring an impractically large inductance. The proposed system intends to address these problems. It incorporates a bi-directional DC/DC converter with feed-forward control to achieve a complex conjugate match over a wide range of frequencies.  Analysis of the proposed system and simulation results are presented to verify validity of the proposed method. / Master of Science

No description available.

Yes / A compact dielectric resonator antenna for ultra-wideband vehicular communication applications is proposed. Two cylindrical dielectric resonators are asymmetrically located with respect to the center of an offset rectangular coupling aperture, through which they are fed. Optimizing the design parameters results in an impedance bandwidth of 21%, covering the range from 5.9 to 7.32 GHz in the lower-band and a 53% relative bandwidth from 8.72 to 15 GHz in the upper-band. The maximum achieved gain is 12 dBi. Design details of the proposed antenna and the results of both simulations and experiment are presented and discussed.

Ternary III-nitride alloys have enabled the design of various devices ranging from optoelectronics to power electronics due to their tunable band gap. BxGa1-xN is a wide band gap semiconductor with applications in detecting devices, power electronics and light-emitting diodes. The band gap can be modulated by changing the Boron concentration. It can be grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition as a mixed thin film of wurtzite and zincblende structures. In this work, we investigate the structural and electronic properties of BxGa1-xN (x<0.2) by first-principles calculations for both the wurtzite and zincblende phases. The formation energies of Si and Mg impurities and of a Ga vacancy are also calculated. We find that the wurtzite structure is favored over the zincblende structure. Furthermore, the Si and Mg impurities have relatively low formation energies in their neutral state, which indicates compatibility with BxGa1-xN, while a Ga vacancy has very high formation energy, hence being less likely to form spontaneously. Moreover, in the charged states, the formation energy of Mg is reasonably low for most values of the Fermi level, while the formation energy of Si depends linearly on the Fermi level, indicating challenges in achieving n-type conductivity. For a Ga vacancy in a triple acceptor state, the formation energy is reasonably low close to the conduction band, therefore, Ga vacancies interfere with n-type conductivity.

A 3D Finite Element Boundary Integral technique (FE-BI) using mixed-order tangential vector finite elements (TVFE?s) is presented. This technique is used to design two wide band antennas and an ultra wideband (UWB) antenna array. Tetrahedral elements are used for domain discretization because they offer higher flexibility when simulating complex structures. A set of hierarchical mixed-order TVFE?s up to and including order 2.5 is implemented. Hierarchical mixed-order TVFE?s accurately simulate regions with high and low field variations. They also guarantee tangential field continuity across element boundaries and suppress spurious modes. The efficacy of the technique has been tested on two different wide band antennas and an UWB array. The first antenna is designed for automotive applications and covers GPS, GSM, XM, and PCS bands (0.8?3.35 GHz). The second antenna is a double sided rounded bowtie antenna (DSRBA) for UWB communication (3.1-10.6 GHz). The third design is a DSRBA array. For validation purposes, the antennas are also simulated using a commercially available high frequency electromagnetic simulation software, HFSS. Results regarding antenna parameters such as return loss, radiation pattern, and gain are also given.

No description available.

Switch mode power supplies are widely used in different applications. High efficiency and high power density are two driving forces for power supply systems. However, high dv/dt and di/dt in switch mode power supplies will cause severe EMI noise issue. In a typical front-end converter, the EMI filter usually occupies 1/3 to 1/4 volume of total converter. Hence, reducing the EMI noise of power converter can help reduce the volume of EMI filter and improving the total power density of the converter. The EMI noise can be separated as differential mode (DM) noise and common mode (CM) noise. For off-line switch mode power supplies, DM noise is dominated by PFC converter. CM noise is a more complicated issue. It is contributed by both PFC converter and DC/DC converter. The DM noise is contributed by input current ripple. Therefore, one method to reduce DM noise is interleaving. There are three methods to reduce CM noise: symmetry, balance and shielding. The idea of symmetry concept is generating another dv/dt source to cancel the original dv/dt source. However, this method is very difficult to achieve and usually has more loss. The balance technique forms a Wheatstone bridge circuit to minimize the CM noise. However, the balance technique cannot achieve very good attenuation at high frequency due to parasitics. Shielding technique is very popular in isolated DC-DC converters to reduce CM noise. However, the previous shielding method requires precise control of parasitic capacitance and dv/dt. It is very difficult to achieve good CM noise attenuation in mass production. In this dissertation, a novel one-layer shielding method for PCB winding transformer is provided. This shielding technique can block CM noise from primary side and also cancel the CM noise from secondary side. In addition, shielding does not increase the loss of converter too much. Furthermore, this shielding technique can be applied to matrix transformer structure. For matrix transformer LLC converter, the inter-winding capacitor is very large and will cause severe CM noise problem. By adding shielding layer, CM noise has been greatly reduced. Although flyback and LLC resonant converter are used as examples to demonstrate the concept, the novel shielding technique can also be applied to other topologies that have similar transformer structure. With Wide-band-gap power devices, the switching frequency of power converter can be pushed 10 times higher than traditional Si based converters. This provides an opportunity to use PCB winding magnetics. In order to reduce the switching loss, critical conduction mode is used in PFC converter. Because of high AC current in the inductor winding, litz wire was used to build the inductor. However, with coupled inductor concept and the proposed winding structure, CRM inductor is integrate into PCB winding for the first time. Furthermore, balance technique is applied to reduce CM noise for PFC converter. With PCB winding, the balance technique has better high frequency performance. The PCB winding inductor can achieve high power density, high efficiency and automated manufacture. Traditionally, two-stage EMI filter was utilized to achieve required EMI noise attenuation. With the developed high frequency, low EMI noise converter, single-stage EMI filter can be applied. However, there are self-parasitic and mutual parasitic components to impact the filter performance on high frequency. The near-field measurement is utilized to visualize the magnetic flux near those filter components. Thus, a better filter design and layout can be achieved to have better high frequency performance. / Ph. D.