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Week7caseandRubric.docxCase study
You are working as a researcher for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Earth Science Division (ESD). Your particular research team is preparing to submit findings from your most recent experiments on satellite antennae performance. More specifically, your team has been testing the received signal strength of dipole and dish antennaes at various distances, pitches, and headings to determine which design is best suited for geostationary weather satellites. As your team’s principal investigator and most talented writer, the task of preparing the report and submitting it to your lab supervisor falls on you.
To get consensus on the report’s objectives, you call your most veteran teammate, Barbara Roberts. You ask Barbara to describe the objectives in her own terms. Barbara responds:
"Well, what we’re really trying to figure out here is which style of antenna is going to work best for the new GEOS-R satellite. We need to optimize how the next generation GEOS satellites communicate with each other, with ground-control, and with other satellites; and, to get there we need to test the received signal strength (RSSI) of dish and dipole antennae at various distances, pitches, and headings. As you know, once we get this thing into orbit, there’s no going back. Our experiments are vital to mission success – without the most robust and efficient antennae, comms is a vulnerable system. And a satellite without comms is just space-trash. Comms need to be bullet-proof, inside and out."
You thank Barbara and hang-up. Almost as soon as you hang-up with Barbara, you receive the following email from Geoff Kamehameha – the team’s theoretical expert.
After you are done reviewing Geoff’s email, you email teammate Leslie Smythe for a definitive list of the experiments’ equipment and supplies. You receive this reply from Leslie.
Leslie Smythe Email reply (PDF)
To ensure accuracy and refresh your memory, you call Lucas DeLeon - whom you know takes impeccable notes - to discuss the experiments’ details. You ask Lucas to describe his notes, and he responds:
"Well, I’ve got it here that we recorded all data for at least 5 seconds, and averaged that data over 5 seconds to derive an average RSSI value, across our experiments. All experiment distances were tested at a transmission power of 1 watt.
For the first experiment, we averaged the RSSI for a dish antenna over 5 seconds, recorded at 20-foot increments from 20 to 200 feet.
The second experiment mirrors the first, but with the dipole antenna.
I think it would be really helpful to graph both experiments together, as well as the corresponding Friss Equations for comparison. It’s also important that we clearly explain how the Friis equation assumes a power of one watt, a gain of one watt, and a frequency of 1 GHz. When we graph the Friis Equations, one line should show the power received in watts, another should show the power in dB, and another should show the power received in RSSI.
The third experiment measured the RSSI for each antenna-type at a uniform distance of 200 feet, transmitting at a power of 1 watt for different angles of heading. This experiment measured each RSSI as an average of RSSI readings every second for 10 seconds. Headings with an RSSI less than 110 watts weren’t significant enough to be measured. We really need a solid graph showing RSSI as a function of heading.
Finally, the fourth experiment tested the antennae at a distance of 200 feet from a one-watt transmission source at various pitches, measured in one-degree increments. RSSI values were averaged over five-second intervals. Pitches less than -15 degrees and greater than 16 degrees were not tested because of antenna design limitations. We absolutely need to graph both heading and pitch functions, as well as a comparison of average dish and dipole RSSI by heading and pitch.
I’ll email you the tables and raw-data. Hope this helps!"
After you hang-up with Lucas, he sends you the appropriate tables to develop the necessary tables and raw-data. Finally, you call together a team meeting over coffee to discuss the experiments’ conclusions. These are the notes from that meeting.
Meeting Notes - Experiment's Conclusions (PDF)
After the meeting, you set to work preparing your team’s final report. Using the details and data offered by your team above, you will handle the report’s interpretation, synthesis, and formatting before submission.
Professor Instructions
This week, you’ll be writing a Laboratory Report. I realize that a lot of information is given in regard to this assignment. However, the goal is simple: take the information you’ve been given and put it into a technical report. You don’t have to worry about accuracy of the information (all that raw data alone can be overwhelming!). Focus primarily on the format. Some of the content you end up writing may be creative, and that’s okay.
You will need to include 4 new data visuals based on the raw data. Take the data and create any 4 visuals you want. Again, this isn’t about accuracy of what the data means; this is about creating visuals that visually makes sense.
There are very few ways in which to do this report incorrectly. Off the top of my head, the only ways I can see that this would be done incorrectly is if you wrote it as a compositional essay or don’t complete each of the 6 required items (found at https://erau.instructure.com/courses/97990/assignments/1736254).
Let’s look at one of those steps. Step 2 says to produce an introduction section synthesizing and interpreting the case study’s central research problem and context. Again, don’t worry about the accuracy of your synthesis or interpretation. It’s okay and expected for you to be creative in your response. Now, of course, all your content needs to be in relation to the case study discussion and data. So, another way this could be done incorrectly is if you write about something way off-topic, like newly found dinosaur bones.
Yes, this is a more open-ended type of assignment. There is no ONE way to do that is correct. This is open to your interpretation. Enjoy the creative part! As a heads up, this will help to prepare you for the upcoming group project in Module 8. I’ll be posting an announcement soon to get you going early on that project.
