A fixed wing airplane having a substantially transparent fuselage, which in straight and level flight permits both the pilot and copilot to see the entire ground and sky in all directions and from nadir to zenith, with the exception of roughly two steradians of solid angle in the quadrant above and behind him. The necessary opaque struts which cross the transparent areas are so oriented and dimensioned that the distant scene as seen through the major areas of the plane appears to be continuous, ...

A technique for reducing the total storage used in representing data having spatial extents. The data is represented in a tree structure having a plurality of nodes, wherein each of the nodes has parent and child relationship to one or more others of the nodes in the tree structure. An encoded representation of the relation of a child node's extents with respect to its parent is stored in the node. A preorder traversal of the tree structure is performed to store it compactly in an output file.

Methods of fabrication of spatial light modulators with deflectable beams by plasma etching after dicing of a substrate into chips, each of the chips an SLM, is disclosed. Also, various architectures available with such plasma etching process are disclosed and include metal cloverleafs for substrate addressing, metal flaps formed in a reflecting layer over a photoresist spacer layer, and torsion hinged flaps in a reflecting layer.

The spatial power combiner disclosed here is used to efficiently combine the power sources, which incorporate two-terminal negative resistance devices, in a coherent manner such that a high power output with a stable and definite frequency and phase is obtained, the sources to be combined being arranged in an array configuration.

An optical spatial frequency filter of the type having a pair of birefringent elements with means for changing the polarization state of light between them is given a substantially color dependent spatial frequency response. The filter comprises a wavelength dependent means for changing the polarization state of light between the birefringent elements such that the polarization state of light of a first color is changed by a first amount and the polarization state of light of a second color is c...

The scan pattern of a raster scan video display system is modified to provide a sinusoidal raster scan, so that derived scan lines made up of pixels of adjacent scan lines are generated to enhance vertical scene resolution. A sinusoidal deflection circuit and microdeflection yoke produce the desired waveform, and a distortion compensation circuit corrects for distortions of the desired waveform.

A spatial imaging system includes a variable focus lens for scanning a visual field. The depth of field of the lens system is narrow relative to the range of the field to be scanned so that visual in-focus image planes of the entire field can be obtained as the focal plane is scanned in range. Detection of in-focus objects may be accomplished by converting the scanned image of each plane into electrical signals which can be filtered or otherwise discriminated to identify in-focus areas. The indi...

A system for sensing the spatial position of a moveable object with respect to an energized conductive surface whereby the spatial coordinates of the object are determined. The system provides a means of accurately measuring the coordinates of the object with respect to a two-dimensional coordinate system independent of the third orthogonal dimension, thereby avoiding significant measurement errors due to variations of the object's position in the third orthogonal dimension. The system also asce...

An analog spatial maneuver computer provides an indication of three output angles through which a body in space must move so as to obtain a desired spatial attitude. These output angles are obtained by means of a plurality of gimbal rings arranged concentrically or connected by axles. The gimbals are selectively adjustable so that one of the rings indicates a first spatial attitude of the body and another of the rings is adapted to indicate the desired attitude of the body. The ring indicating t...

A spatial diversity system for digital mobile telephone networks which comprises at least two antennas, one antenna being part of a primary (or master) unit and the other being part of a diversity (or slave) unit, each unit having processing means to detect the "quality" of digital audio signals received by their respective antennas, the "quality" comprising link quality, AGC level and parity errors; the primary unit being capable of comparing the "quality" of the audio signals received by each ...