Mitre Corporation

About: Mitre Corporation is a company organization based out in Bedford, Massachusetts, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Air traffic control & National Airspace System. The organization has 4884 authors who have published 6053 publications receiving 124808 citations. The organization is also known as: Mitre & MITRE.

Multistatic Synthetic Aperture Radar Image Formation

Abstract: In this paper, we consider a multistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging scenario where a swarm of airborne antennas, some of which are transmitting, receiving or both, are traversing arbitrary flight trajectories and transmitting arbitrary waveforms without any form of multiplexing. The received signal at each receiving antenna may be interfered by the scattered signal due to multiple transmitters and additive thermal noise at the receiver. In this scenario, standard bistatic SAR image reconstruction algorithms result in artifacts in reconstructed images due to these interferences. In this paper, we use microlocal analysis in a statistical setting to develop a filtered-backprojection (FBP) type analytic image formation method that suppresses artifacts due to interference while preserving the location and orientation of edges of the scene in the reconstructed image. Our FBP-type algorithm exploits the second-order statistics of the target and noise to suppress the artifacts due to interference in a mean-square sense. We present numerical simulations to demonstrate the performance of our multistatic SAR image formation algorithm with the FBP-type bistatic SAR image reconstruction algorithm. While we mainly focus on radar applications, our image formation method is also applicable to other problems arising in fields such as acoustic, geophysical and medical imaging.

Trends in mobile satellite technology

Abstract: Demand for sophisticated personal communication services has changed communications satellite design. Satellites have moved closer to the Earth to improve communication speed and enable personal communication services. However, in so doing, they require more computing resources and more sophisticated protocols to handle intersatellite communications. This article examines the trends in communications satellite deployment and the resulting requirements for network protocols that are intended to support space communications. It reports the findings of a joint DoD/NASA effort to identify what parts of the seven-layer OSI protocol model can be adapted to support more sophisticated space applications.

Assessment of field trials, algorithmic performance, and benefits of the User Request Evaluation Tool (URET) conflict probe

Abstract: In order to respond to rising demands for services from the National Airspace System (NAS), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and The Mitre Corporation's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) have developed and evaluated a set of en route air traffic control (ATC) decision support capabilities based on many of years of earlier work on the Advanced En Route ATC (AERA) program. The component capabilities-embodied in a prototype referred to as the User Request Evaluation Tool (URET)-include a conflict probe that continuously checks current flight plan trajectories for strategic conflicts, and a Trial Planning function that allows a controller to expeditiously evaluate problem resolutions before they are issued as clearances. These capabilities are intended to provide the flexibility and decision support needed to allow more user preferences to be met while continuing to maintain or enhance today's level of safety. The URET prototype was deployed to the Indianapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) for field trials in January 1996 and later expanded to include more sectors and to span longer periods of time. In addition, the prototype has been deployed and is being evaluated at the Memphis ARTCC. This paper presents key findings from the field trials and from other related activities.

TrueHappiness: Neuromorphic emotion recognition on TrueNorth

Abstract: We present an approach to constructing a neuromorphic device that responds to language input by producing neuron spikes in proportion to the strength of the appropriate positive or negative emotional response. Specifically, we perform a fine-grained sentiment analysis task with implementations on two different systems: one using conventional spiking neural network (SNN) simulators and the other one using IBM's Neurosynaptic System TrueNorth. Input words are projected into a high-dimensional semantic space and processed through a fully-connected neural network (FCNN) containing rectified linear units (ReLU) trained via backpropagation. After training, this FCNN is converted to a SNN by substituting the ReLUs with integrate-and-fire neurons. We show that there is practically no performance loss due to conversion to a spiking network on a sentiment analysis test set, i.e. correlations with human annotations differ by less than 0.02 between the original DNN and its spiking equivalent. Additionally, we show that the SNN generated with this technique can be mapped to existing neuromorphic hardware - in our case, the TrueNorth chip. Mapping to the chip involves 4-bit synaptic weight discretization and adjustment of the neuron thresholds. The resulting end-to-end system can take a user input, i.e. a word in a vocabulary of over 300,000 words, and estimate its sentiment on TrueNorth with a power consumption of approximately 50 µW.

Programmable systolic BCH decoder

Abstract: A programmable decoder that provides both error and erasure decoding for all Reed-Solomon, primitive BCH, non-primitive BCH, and binary BCH codes of any rate over any field is disclosed. The user can specify decoding parameters including the code block-length, the code-generator polynomial, and the field-generator polynomial. The basic architecture, less the small overhead for programmability, is also recommended for fixed-code applications. The decoding processor of the decoder includes systolic arrays implementing a syndrome calculator, a key equation solver, a Chien search, a recursive extender, and an inverse transform. The number of cells required for each of the five functions is on order of the error correction capability t. The systolic arrays can be fabricated on a single VLSI microchip that is itself systolic. Each of the individual systolic arrays can extended by arraying microchips together, so that any desired error correction capability can be attained by using multiple systolic microchips with a single controller.