Patents Represented by Attorney Anthony W. Karambelas
  • Patent number: 7028953
    Abstract: A spacecraft heat dissipation method, and a spacecraft having an improved thermal radiator system that uses two-sided deployable thermal radiators that dissipates heat from both front and back surfaces thereof. The use of the two-sided deployable thermal radiators enables the thermal radiator system to have approximately 50% more heat dissipating capability than a system with just one surface exposed to dissipate heat. The spacecraft includes a body, one or more solar arrays, and the present radiator system which comprises opposite facing fixed payload radiators that are thermally coupled to selected ones of the deployable radiators by way of heat pipes. In an exemplary method a spacecraft is configured to have a body, one or more solar arrays opposite facing fixed payload radiators, and one or more two-sided deployable radiators selectively coupled to the fixed payload radiators. The spacecraft is launched into orbit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 11, 2001
    Date of Patent: April 18, 2006
    Assignee: Space Systems/Loral
    Inventors: Susan Sebata, Lenny Low
  • Patent number: 6414646
    Abstract: Variable beamwidth antenna systems for use on spacecraft that is capable of changing their beamwidths while the spacecraft in on orbit. The variable beamwidth antenna systems include a main reflector, a subreflector, a feed horn, a main reflector displacement mechanism and a feed horn (or subreflector) displacement mechanism. For broaden the beamwidth, the RF feed horn and the subreflector are moved close together by proper distance. The main reflector is moved away from the subreflector along a line through centers of their respective surface by a distance given by a predetermined equation. Another embodiment of the present invention provides for a zoom contour beam antenna system that radiates a contour beam and whose beam is variable or zoomable.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 2, 2001
    Date of Patent: July 2, 2002
    Assignee: Space Systems/Loral, Inc.
    Inventor: Howard Ho-shou Luh
  • Patent number: 6311929
    Abstract: A spacecraft having a body, one or more appendages coupled thereto, and a controller that implements methods that rotate the one or more flexible appendages to point it (them) towards the Sun to reduce spacecraft attitude pointing disturbances and improves spacecraft attitude pointing. The steps of the one or more appendages are timed to deadbeat the disturbance imparted to the spacecraft body. Timing of the appendage steps may be such that the periodic disturbances are phased to substantially cancel each other, or phased to decrease the magnitude of the net disturbance. The present invention also cancels solar array slew disturbances. The present invention cancels predictable disturbance torques before they produce a pointing error, improving the spacecraft pointing performance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 26, 1999
    Date of Patent: November 6, 2001
    Assignee: Space Systems/Loral, Inc.
    Inventors: Fatima Kazimi, Keith Reckdahl, Tung Liu, Yat Fai Leung, John Higham
  • Patent number: 5689210
    Abstract: A circuit that samples a through signal, while minimizing attenuation, distortion, or other perturbation to the through signal and sampled signal. The present invention provides for an active distributed signal sampler that includes two transmission lines. An input port is coupled to the first transmission line for receiving the through signal, and a through output port is coupled to an output end of the first transmission line for outputting the through signal. The second transmission line is terminated at one end and has a sampled output port at an output end of the second transmission line for outputting the sampled signal. A plurality of high impedance amplifiers bridge between the transmission lines, and a plurality of inductors are coupled between each of the high impedance amplifiers. A plurality of transmission lines may be optionally employed in the second transmission line.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 20, 1995
    Date of Patent: November 18, 1997
    Inventor: Julius Lange
  • Patent number: 5657261
    Abstract: A filtering technique that results in improved performance of interpolating filters. The improved filter and technique replicates samples of the digital input signal instead of inserting zeroes before smoothing to eliminate undesired images of the sampled input signal. The filter includes a digital equivalent of a sample and hold for sampling the digital input signal at the input sample rate and for replicating the sampled digital input signal a predetermined number of times to increase the sample rate by an integer multiple and produce replicated samples of the input signal. A smoothing filter is coupled to the digital sample and hold for smoothing the replicated samples. The smoothing filter has a shape having a high frequency enhancement followed by a sharp cutoff that compensates for the replicated samples of the input signal. Interpolated digital output signals are provided therefrom that are at a sample rate higher than the input sample rate.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 17, 1995
    Date of Patent: August 12, 1997
    Inventors: Dennis L. Wilson, M. Campbell Smith
  • Patent number: 5654670
    Abstract: A circuit that injects an auxiliary signal into an existing signal path, thereby adding it to an existing main signal, while minimizing attenuation, distortion, or other perturbation to the main signal. The present invention provides for a active distributed signal injector that includes two transmission lines. An input port is coupled to the first transmission line for receiving the main signal, and a main output port is coupled to an output end of the first transmission line for outputting the main signal. The second transmission line is terminated at an output end and has an injected signal input port at an input end of the second transmission line. A plurality of high impedance amplifiers bridge between the transmission lines, and a plurality of inductors are coupled between each of the high impedance amplifiers. A plurality of transmission lines may be optionally employed in the second transmission line.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 20, 1995
    Date of Patent: August 5, 1997
    Inventor: Julius Lange
  • Patent number: 5619627
    Abstract: Occulting apparatus for use with an image generator that provides for multiple-level occulting of image data. The occulting apparatus comprises a mask buffer and control logic for processing image data to construct and store an obscurance mask in the mask buffer. Foreground entities contained in the image data are logically ORed into the mask buffer until the entities extend beyond a predefined range from a predetermined image viewpoint. Thereafter, the mask is used by the control logic to reject entities contained in subsequently processed image data that are fully obscured by the foreground entities comprising the obscurance mask. The control logic includes an obscurance manager, a region processor, an object processor, a polygon processor, and insertion logic. The obscurance manager is a controller for building and applying the obscurance mask to the image data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 3, 1994
    Date of Patent: April 8, 1997
    Assignee: Loral Aerospace Corp.
    Inventors: Brian T. Soderberg, Dale D. Miller, Henrik Lind, Richard Jarvis, Mark Kenworthy
  • Patent number: 5568904
    Abstract: A satellite perigee velocity augmentation method wherein a satellite is steered throughout the perigee velocity augmentation maneuver such that its thrust vector is always oriented approximately opposite to the direction of motion of the satellite. The satellite is pitched around a predetermined axis (e.g. the Y-axis) such that the thrust vector is always pointing approximately opposite to the direction of motion of the satellite. The satellite is steered during the perigee velocity augmentation maneuver in order to achieve the desired attitude wherein the thrust vector is always oriented approximately opposite to the direction of motion of the satellite is accomplished by pitching the satellite around the predetermined axis such that the thrust vector is always pointing approximately opposite to the direction of motion of the satellite. By steering the satellite in accordance with the present perigee velocity augmentation method, overall efficiency achieved is increased.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 28, 1992
    Date of Patent: October 29, 1996
    Assignee: Space Systems/Loral, Inc.
    Inventors: J. Kurt Brock, Darren R. Stratemeier, Eugene L. Williams
  • Patent number: 5551793
    Abstract: A locking device for quickly attaching a wing to and removing the wing from a body of a missile, for example. The locking device is disposed in an opening in the wing and is adapted to secure the wing to the body of the missile using its attachment rail. The locking device comprises a rotatable cam, a rotatable cam follower for locking the wing to the attachment rail, and a cam latch for locking the cam follower in place. The cam has a opening disposed therein that is suitable for accepting a locking tool, such as an Allen wrench, for example, that is used to rotate the cam, and hence the cam follower, to attach the wing to and remove the wing from a m-fissile. A plurality of springs are respectively employed to retract the the cam follower when the locking device is disengaged, and to secure the cam latch in place when the cam follower is locked in place.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 26, 1994
    Date of Patent: September 3, 1996
    Assignee: Loral Aerospace Corp.
    Inventor: Richard S. Lewis
  • Patent number: 5534293
    Abstract: A method for treating surfaces of carbon based materials produces a layer of hafnium carbide with no significant change of the location of the surface or the dimension of the part being treated. A slurry containing elemental hafnium is applied to this surface. The surface is heat treated in a vacuum furnace, causing the hafnium in the slurry to form an HfC layer within the material, and remove all other slurry materials from the surface. In a variation of the method, the slurry may also contain silicon and chromium to catalyze the reaction. The treated surface exhibits improved properties for components of high temperature gas flow handling systems. The method is useful for valves and ducts having complex internal surface geometries.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 23, 1994
    Date of Patent: July 9, 1996
    Assignee: Loral Aerospace Corp.
    Inventor: Bradley D. Wisneskie
  • Patent number: 5499341
    Abstract: Apparatus that provides working storage for large image and data processing systems. The apparatus comprises a computer bus, a high speed backplane bus, a local area network, a central processing unit coupled to the computer bus, an Ethernet local area network interface coupled between the computer bus and the local area network, a plurality of bidirectional input/output interface cards coupled to the computer bus and the backplane bus, and a plurality of disk modules coupled to the computer bus and the high speed backplane bus. Each interface card comprises a plurality of bidirectional input/output ports coupled to a plurality of user workstations, a fiber optic interface, and a FIFO buffer. Each disk module comprises a plurality of storage units, one of which provides for storage of parity bits and the remainder of which provides for storage of data, and a distribution card coupled to the plurality of storage units.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 25, 1994
    Date of Patent: March 12, 1996
    Assignee: Loral Aerospace Corp.
    Inventors: Dennis L. Wilson, Patrick W. O'Connor
  • Patent number: 5495502
    Abstract: An equalizer employed with a receiver for cancelling an interfering signal due to low cross-polarization isolation. The present equalizer provides a simple and inexpensive cross-polarization interference cancellation system. The equalizer uses an error signal generated in an adaptive baseband equalizer to determine the magnitude of an interfering signal and inputs a cancelling signal to the co-polarized channel until power in the error signal derived from the adaptive baseband equalizer is minimized. In the equalizer, the determination of the magnitude of the interfering signal is performed at baseband (after demodulation but prior to data detection) and the cancellation is performed at RF, prior to dispersive microwave elements. The equalizer enhances the capability for transmitting two unique signals in the same frequency allocation on orthogonal polarizations. The equalizer operates even if the modulations and data rates on the two channels are different.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 18, 1994
    Date of Patent: February 27, 1996
    Assignee: Loral Aerospace Corp.
    Inventor: Steven Andersen
  • Patent number: 5493643
    Abstract: An image generator architecture in which tri-level fixed interleave processing provides medium grain parallelism for polygon, tiling, and pixel operations. Input data at each stage are divided into spatially distributed subsets that are interleaved among parallel processors using a fixed, precalculated mapping that minimizes correlation of local scene complexity with any one processor. The present tri-level fixed interleave processing architecture divides a processing task into a pseudo-random, fixed interleaved pattern of regions that are assigned to different processors. Each processor processes many of these randomly located regions. The assignment of processors to regions is a fixed repeating pattern. The highest level of fixed interleave processing is the allocation of fixed-size database regions (area modules) to polygon processors. The next level relates to image sub-region fixed interleave processing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 3, 1994
    Date of Patent: February 20, 1996
    Assignee: Loral Aerospace Corp.
    Inventors: Brian T. Soderberg, Dale D. Miller, Douglas Pheil, Kent Cauble, Mark N. Heinen, Mark L. Kenworthy
  • Patent number: 5483539
    Abstract: A programmable PCM/TDM demultiplexer including an FA function unit including Frame Alignment Logic (FAL) hardware controlled by a Programmable Frame Alignment Controller (PFAC), and accompanied by a DECommutation and dejustification (DEC) function unit including Output Logic Hardware (OLH) controlled by a Programmable Decommutator Sequencer (PDS) controlled in turn by a Programmable Decommutator Sequencer Controller (PDSC).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 7, 1994
    Date of Patent: January 9, 1996
    Assignee: Loral Aerospace Corp.
    Inventor: John Kaufmann
  • Patent number: 5463927
    Abstract: A missile loading system for loading a missile onto a missile launcher disposed on a vehicle. The missile comprises fore and aft missile hangers that each have upper and lower hooks that have a predetermined separation distance therebetween. The improvement provided by the present invention comprises a launch rail disposed on the missile launcher that has two cut-outs disposed a predetermined distance apart that equals the separation distance between the fore and aft missile hangers on the missile. A plurality of load detent mechanisms (fore and aft) are provided that each comprise a body having the shape of the launch rail, and a lip by which the missile is secured, and an opening disposed therein. A plurality of holes are disposed in the body that are used to secure the load detent mechanism the cut-outs in the launch rail. A spring-loaded member having the shape of the launch rail is rotatably secured in the opening of the body.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 3, 1994
    Date of Patent: November 7, 1995
    Assignee: Loral Aerospace Corp.
    Inventor: Richard S. Lewis
  • Patent number: 5442582
    Abstract: A transversal filter allrate equalizer for use at intermediate frequency. The equalizer includes a signal divider coupled to receive the intermediate frequency input signal and a transversal filter comprising a plurality of analog delay lines and a plurality of multiplying circuits. The plurality of analog delay lines are coupled to the signal divider for producing a time-shifted replica of an intermediate frequency input signal. The plurality of multiplying circuits are respectively coupled to the delay lines for weighting the time-shifted replicas of the input signal by complex numbers, W.sub.i. A signal combiner is coupled to the plurality of multiplying circuits for recombining the time-shifted and weighted replicas of the input signal to produce an equalized output signal. The delay lines operate at an intermediate frequency, and produce a time delay for the modulation and a phase shift for the carrier. The phase shift may be compensated for by adjusting the phases of the tap weights, W.sub.i.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 4, 1994
    Date of Patent: August 15, 1995
    Assignee: Loral Aerospace Corp.
    Inventors: Julius Lange, Elbert L. Turner
  • Patent number: 5442663
    Abstract: An equalizer employed with a receiver for cancelling an interfering signal due to low cross-polarization isolation. The present equalizer provides a simple and inexpensive cross-polarization interference cancellation system. The equalizer uses an error signal generated in a residual carrier detector to determine the magnitude of an interfering signal and inputs a cancelling signal to the co-polarized channel until power in the error signal is minimized. In the equalizer, the determination of the magnitude of the interfering signal is performed at baseband (after demodulation but prior to data detection) and the cancellation is performed at RF, prior to dispersive microwave elements. In the receiver, co- and cross-polarized signals are received and amplified. A copy of the cross channel input signal is supplied to each receiver channel. An RF vector modulator is used to control the phase and amplitude of the cross-polarized signal prior to summation with a desired co-polarized signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 22, 1994
    Date of Patent: August 15, 1995
    Assignee: Loral Aerospace Corp.
    Inventors: Steven Andersen, James Berman, Chris Hinkle, Michael Jacobson, Richard Koralek, James F. Lebar, Francis J. Smith
  • Patent number: 5414732
    Abstract: Adaptive equalizers and processing methods wherein data required to implement an adaptation algorithm is sampled at a rate that is significantly lower than the symbol rate. The adaptation algorithm is processed at this reduced rate, in that updated tap coefficients, sample timing errors and symbol clock error signals are computed at this reduced rate. An advantage of the adaptive equalizer and processing method of the present invention is that the adaptation algorithm may be implemented in equipment that operates at a clock rate that is much less then the symbol rate. In particular, the adaptation algorithm may be computed using software that is resident in inexpensive general purpose digital processor, such as a personal computer, for example.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 17, 1993
    Date of Patent: May 9, 1995
    Assignee: Loral Aerospace Corp.
    Inventor: John Kaufmann
  • Patent number: 5341147
    Abstract: A method for predicting and compensating for angular beam misalignment of an antenna (101) due to antenna shape distortion resulting from gravitational effects. Measured (701, 702) antenna shape data in a target gravity loading environment and several test environments (600-603) are used to compute expected antenna beam misalignment angles in the test gravity loading environments (600-603). Actual antenna beam misalignment angles are measured (705) with the antenna (101) positioned in each of the test gravity loading environments (600-603). The expected antenna beam misalignment angles (704) are combined (707) with measured beam misalignment angles (705) to predict the beam misalignment of the antenna (101) in the target gravity loading environment. If the antenna (101) is an adjustable type, then the antenna (101) can be deliberately misaligned on the test range so that it will be properly aligned in the different gravity condition of the target environment.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 23, 1992
    Date of Patent: August 23, 1994
    Assignee: Space Systems/Loral, Inc.
    Inventor: William G. Scott
  • Patent number: 5326996
    Abstract: Methods and apparatus for implementing charge skimming and variable integration time in focal plane arrays formed in a silicon substrate. The present invention provides for pulsing a field plate that lies over a diode disposed in the substrate in order to provide for charge skimming and variable integration time. The field plate is normally dc biased to suppress diode edge leakage. No additional structure is needed in the silicon substrate, and basic readout clocking is unaffected. Any interline transfer focal plane array can benefit from using the principles of the present invention.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 6, 1993
    Date of Patent: July 5, 1994
    Assignee: Loral Fairchild Corp.
    Inventor: Michael J. McNutt