A Rapid Statistical Data Processing System for Radio Propagation Research

Research activities in the general field of radio propagation have for many years been concentrated in three areas: a. Theoretical research pertaining to the development of physico-mathematical relations amongst the transmitted energy, the characteristics of the mediinn through which the radio energy is propagated and the received energy. b. Experimental research pertaining to the measurement of certain of the quantities referred to in a, with the intent of further refining theories. c. Experimental research pertaining to new applications of scattering and reflection phenomena. Extension and verification of theories and the application of certain propagation phenomena to specific problems has been hindered because of the absence of adequate means of collecting and processing experimental data. The Franklin Institute Laboratories for Research and Development are now developing a data collection and statistical analysis system specifically designed for use by researchers in radio propagation. It is patterned after a similar system* previously developed and in use now in the study of the reflection of electromagnetic waves from various large surfaces. The system includes: a. A multichannel magnetic tape recorder for original records, which may be airborne. b. A transcriber to convert the original records into form for use in the computing equipment. c. A computer for determining the auto- or cross-correlation function and frequency spectrum of the recorded data. d. A computer for determining the first probabihty density function of the recorded data. e. A computer to determine average values of the recorded data. f. Auxiliary elements and test equipment. The anticipated ranges of this data processing system which are of particular interest are: Bandwidth of Frequency Spectnun Computer 0-4 to 0-250 c/s Frequency Resolution 0.02-5 c/s Maximum Delay in Correlation Function Computer 0.8-51 sec Nmnber of Sorting Levels in First Probabihty Density Computer 50 or 100