Department Information

Project Information

CE Personnel Information

Central Engineering

Electrical Engineering
 
Electrical Project Engineering:
  • Project proposal development.
  • Project management.
  • Resource estimation, allocation, and management.

Electrical Systems Design
  • Top down electrical systems design for low, medium, and high complexity systems.
  • Grounding systems design.
  • Power System Design.
  • Safety Systems
  • Failure Mode Analysis (FMEA)
  • Design Trade Studies.

Space Instrumentation
  • Highest reliability, low power, radiation hardened, weight/volume constrained design.
  • CCD/CMOS imaging detector electronics.
  • Detector high speed data processing electronics.
  • Actuator control (shutters, filter wheels, optic positioning, etc.).
  • System monitoring electronics (temperature, voltage, current, etc.).
  • Electrical Ground Support Equipment and Test Fixtures.

Laboratory and Ground Based Instruments
  • High reliability/low power designs for observatory grade research instrumentation.
  • CCD/CMOS imaging detector electronics.
  • High speed robotics for optical fiber element positioning.
  • High accuracy and reliability mechanisms for optical positioning.
  • Incorporation of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) subsystems and components into systems that reduce design time and costs.

Motion control system design for optics positioning and precision CNC machining.
  • Multi-axis motion systems using Delta Tau PMAC controllers.
  • Control system design, simulation, analysis, and implementation.
  • Motor and drive sizing for motion system.
  • Position and velocity feedback component selection.
  • Machine vision applications.

Detector development
  • CCD/CMOS imaging detector electronics.
  • High energy photon counting detectors for astrophysics.

Computer System Architecture
  • Configuration of commercial computer hardware and software for system control and data reduction.
  • Embedded PC in PC104 and cPCI form factors.
  • Win-CE, XPe, and embedded Linux operating systems.
  • Custom design of FPGA and DSP based electronics for specialized control and data processing requirements.

Analog Design
  • Low noise analog detector and sensor processing electronics.
  • Preamp design.
  • VIDEO pulse shaping networks, peak detection circuits, and baseline restoration for detectors.
  • CCD/CMOS detector biasing and sequencing electronics. State sequencers are implemented in FPGA's and controlling DAC's and ADC's for detector clock generation and signal digitization.
  • Sensor biasing and precision conditioning/readout networks.
  • Temperature, pressure, vacuum, strain sensors, accelerometers, etc.
  • Printed wiring board design for low noise analog systems.

Digital Design
  • FPGA controllers for imaging detector control and readout.
  • FPGA, DSP, and microcontroller designs for system/motion control and data processing.
  • Altera, Xilinx, and Actel FPGA and CPLD design using Verilog HDL, VHDL, and vendor-specific design tools.
  • TI TMS320xx, Motorola 56K, Analog Devices DSP families.
  • Intel, Microchip, Motorola, embedded 8 and 16 bit embedded microcontroller designs.
  • Ethernet and USB interfaced electronics.
  • Rabbit RCM3000 and ColdFire based designs for embedded Ethernet.
  • Hardware interface design.
  • Opto-isolated designs, and serial and parallel interfaces (single ended, differential, LVDS, etc.)
  • FIFO and DPRAM data buffering techniques for high data volume applications.
  • High density, high speed surface mount multilayer printed wiring board designs.

R.F. Design
  • Radio frequency system and board design for MASER systems.
  • Telemetry interface to R.F. Gondola Systems on CSBF balloon payloads.
  • Systems design for EMI and RFI compatibility.

Software Development
  • Embedded systems using ANSI C and assembler firmware.
  • Embedded PC's using Win-CE, XPe, and embedded Linux o/s.
  • Interface software for system control and monitoring under Windows and Linux operating systems.
  • Java based WEB interface software for Ethernet enabled embedded systems.

Low Voltage Power Systems
  • Design of low voltage DC power subsystems for electrical systems including selection of commercial power supplies, and design of custom power supplies, where needed.

High Voltage Power Systems
  • Design of high voltage DC power subsystems for electrical systems including selection of commercial power supplies, and design of custom power supplies, where needed.

AC Voltage Power Systems
  • Design of mid-voltage, single and multi-phase power systems for medium and large instrument systems. Design of surge protection and power limiting networks using COTS power system components.

High Reliability, Rad-Hard systems
  • Place text here to describe High Reliability, Rad-Hard Systems.

Electronic Packaging
  • Chassis design for rack-based medium and large systems.
  • Interface panel design.
  • Instrument package designs for low weight and volume applications.
  • High performance/high reliability cable design.

Design, test, and utilization of space qualified hybrid microcircuits
  • Circuit design and simulation of hybrid microelectronics.
  • Work with outside vendor for fabrication.

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