Abstract
The hyperspectral microwave atmospheric sounder (HyMAS), for weather and climate missions, is capable of all-weather sounding equivalent to hyperspectral infrared sounders (in which clouds decrease the accuracy of the results) in clear air with vertical resolution of approximately 1 km. This will improve both the vertical and horizontal resolutions of the atmosphere. Through the use of independent RF antennas that sample the volume of the Earth's atmosphere through various levels of frequencies, thereby producing a set of dense, spaced vertical weighting functions, hyperspectral microwave is achieved. This yields surface precipitation rate and water path retrievals for small hail, soft hail, or snow pellets, snow, rainwater, etc. with high accuracies. One of HyMAS requirements is a graphical user interface (GUI). Hyperspectral measurements allow the user to determine the Earth's temperature with vertical resolution exceeding 1km (1093.61 yards).
TopIntroduction
This chapter details the steps taken to design a graphical user interface (GUI) for a Hyperspectral Microwave Atmospheric Sounder (HyMAS) climate mission satellite. One should be able to follow these steps with the specified set of hardware and software to get the same configuration on the proper USRP device. This project was implemented under the supervision of NASA scientists and faculty advisors in dedicated NASA labs. Following lessons learned here and authors’ previous experiences in data visualization and signal processing research and training relevant labs were designed to enhance the Computer Engineering program at the Virginia State University (VSU) (Sheybani, 1992, 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2017; Javidi, 2008, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2017; Ouyang, 2010; Garcia-Otero, 2011; Badombena-Wanta, 2010; Ettus, 2014, 2015; Luttamaguzi, 2017; Mathworks, 2014).
The idea of HyMAS is to improve temperature and moisture measurement accuracy compared to non-hyperspectral microwave sounding systems. Non-hyperspectral microwave Sounding systems accuracy are challenged when high water vapor and clouds are present. HyMAS uses a processor to gather frequencies, which is analyzed and recorded. The recorded frequencies can be any precipitation or temperature in the atmosphere. The frequencies can range within 118-183 GHz. The HyMAS Emulator is an intermediate frequency generated by a radio frequency. The emulator amplifies, filters, channelizes, and detects each channel using a detector. An Explorer 16 board can be used to interface with the emulator.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Graphical User Interface (GUI): It is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators such as secondary notation, instead of text-based user interfaces, typed command labels or text navigation. GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces (CLIs) which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard.
Atmospheric Sounding: It is a measurement of vertical distribution of physical properties of the atmospheric column such as pressure, temperature, wind speed and wind direction (thus deriving wind shear), liquid water content, ozone concentration, pollution, and other properties. Such measurements are performed in a variety of ways including remote sensing and in situ observations.
DSP: It is the use of digital processing, such as by computers or more specialized digital signal processors, to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations. The signals processed in this manner are a sequence of numbers that represent samples of a continuous variable in a domain such as time, space, or frequency.
Communications Satellite: It is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunications signals via a transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on Earth. Communications satellites are used for television, telephone, radio, internet, and military applications. There are over 2,000 communications satellites in Earth’s orbit, used by both private and government organizations.