Sri International

Bryan Klofas

Michael Nicolls

David Watters

John J Buonocore

Daniel P Ceperley

Ryan C Peterson

Thomas Durak

Michael Greffen

Moyra Malone

Leon Tao

Samson Phan

William Hoskins

Todd Koumrian

Michael Cousins

Scott Gulkin

Michael J Nicolls

Small, low-cost satellite systems, like CubeSats or other microsatellites, can exhibit reduced reliability relative to higher-cost satellite systems. This can result in difficulty identifying, communicating with, and tracking such satellite systems when they fail. Provided herein are reliable, low-cost, low-energy, turn-key systems for identification and tracking of small satellites that can be readily added to a microsatellite with minimal integration costs and while occupying a minimal amount of volume, mass, and external area of the host satellite. These systems are electrically isolated from the satellite bus, being powered by internal batteries or other separate energy sources and providing reliable identification and tracking even when the other systems of the satellite have failed. These improved identification and tracking systems include space environment sensors to maintain the system in a very-low-power state while the system is in vehicle processing and transit on Earth, extending device lifetime and reducing cost and weight.

Satellite identification tag

A phased array antenna system has at least one trough reflector, each trough reflector having at least one phased array located at a feed point of the reflector, and an array of elements located near to a point equal to one half of a center transmission wavelength. A method of decoding a receive signal includes propagating a transmit signal through a transmit and a receive path of a phased array to generate a coupled signal, digitizing the coupled signal, storing the digitized coupled signal, receiving a signal from a target, and using the digitized coupled signal to decode the signal from the target. A method of modeling the ionosphere includes transmitting measuring pulses from an incoherent scattering radar transmitter, receiving incoherent scatter from the transmitting, and analyzing the incoherent scatter to determine pulse and amplitude of the incoherent scatter to profile electron number density of the ionosphere.

1D phased array antenna for radar and communications

Growing community of inventors

San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Bryan Klofas