Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

System Level Characterization Of The Gridded Retarding Ion Drift Sensor (Grids) For The Petitsat Mission, Benjamin B. Oborn

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Weather prediction, wherever people live, serves as a beneficial part of everyday life. Weather in the upper portions of Earth’s atmosphere also impacts life on Earth but it is not able to be predicted as well as its terrestrial counterpart. PetitSat is a cube satellite (CubeSat) mission proposed to help remedy this issue. It will collect measurements of charged particles in the upper atmosphere called a plasma. The measurements taken by PetitSat will facilitate better prediction of upper-atmospheric weather. Prediction of when and where weather phenomenon will occur will allow avoidance of negative consequences that can result. Once such negative …

Design Of A Sweeping Impedance Probe For The Sport Mission, Caleb W. Young

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In our modern world satellite systems are an evermore common part of day to day life. Reliable communication from the ground to these satellites is becoming more and more necessary. Plasma scintillations in the ionosphere can make these communications difficult or even impossible. By gaining a better understanding of these scintillations, times of bad satellite connection can be predicted in the same way terrestrial weather gets predicted and reported today. The objective of the SPORT mission is to gain a better understanding of these plasma scintillations. In order to measure plasma density, and gain a better understanding of plasma scintillations, …

Command, Control, And Telemetry For Utah State University's Scintillation Prediction Observation Research Task (Sport) Mission, Jordan Haws

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Scintillation Prediction Observation Research Task (SPORT) is a joint United States of America (USA) and Brazil small satellite mission to address the further understanding of the preconditions leading to equatorial plasma bubbles. Utah State University (USU) is supplying four instruments towards this SPORT mission. These four instruments will allow measurements of the electric field and plasma density in the ionosphere which will help understand what gives rise to plasma bubbles in the ionosphere.

This thesis will discuss the command, control, and telemetry communications needed to operate the SPORT USU instruments. It will cover an overview of the instruments involved, …

Sequential Quadrature Measurements For Plasma Diagnostics, Julio Martin-Hidalgo

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The ionosphere is the atmosphere layer characterized by its high concentration of ionized plasma. It has a great impact on radio communications with satellites, causing disturbances and disruptions. Therefore, it is important to understand and predict the ionosphere characteristics.

The Sweeping Impedance Probe (SIP) is an instrument for characterizing the ionosphere used for many decades with great success. In this thesis, a new SIP architecture design is presented using the latest techniques and components available. The design is detailed and analyses have been performed to ensure the required performances. The new SIP will be flown in the Auroral Spatial Structures …

Determination Of Ionospheric Current Systems By Measuring The Phase Shift On Amateur Satellite Frequencies, Prajwal M. Kasturi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Linearly polarized electromagnetic waves traveling through cold magnetized plasma experience Faraday rotation. The Appleton Hartree dispersion equation relates the phase shift on any electromagnetic ray to the magnetic field B, ion-electron density N_e and the angle the ray makes with the instantaneous magnetic field. This work uses the dispersion relation to calculate small time scale magnetic perturbations in the ionosphere due to electrojet current systems. The ionosphere is modeled as a collision free cold plasma with synthesized small scale magnetic perturbations. The work presented here simulates test cases, where the satellites transmits three amateur satellite radio band frequencies …

Langmuir Probe Measurements In The Ionosphere, Aroh Barjatya

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Electric probes have been the primary instruments for the in situ investigation of plasma parameters in the Earth’s ionosphere. This dissertation is a compendium of three papers, each dealing with a separate spacecraft that carried one or more instruments based on the electric probe technique.

The first paper presents data from the Sudden Atom Layer sounding rocket that carried an RF Impedance Probe, a DC fixed-bias Langmuir Probe (DCP), and an Electric Field Probe. The combined dataset indicates a case of payload surface charging, the causes of which are investigated within the paper. A generic circuit model is developed to …