A RANDOM-SCAN DISPLAY OF PREDICTED SATELLITE POSITIONS.

With the completion of the NRL evaluation of the experimental model of the Satellite Position Prediction and Display equipment SPAD, efforts were directed toward the design of an operational version of SPAD. Possible design and equipment configurations were proposed which would lead to a substantial savings in cost and reduced equipment complexity. These designs involve the displaying of the SPAD information by means of a random scanning of the display area, thus allowing a large reduction in the circuitry associated with the display generator. Another advantage of this method is that the computer-display buffer memory, which stores all of the information for display, can be incorporated into the computer. Although this requires a higher speed computer than would otherwise be necessary, the amount of external circuitry would be greatly reduced and the overall reliability increased. Another possible alternative is to adapt SPAD for use in a Naval Tactical Data System NTDS. This would be particularly useful if an NTDS facility is available for use by SPAD. Author