US 10,763,579 B2 · Mobile terminal antenna alignment using arbitrary orientation attitude

Abstract

Systems and methods for aligning a satellite antenna mounted on a mobile platform to the platform. At each of several arbitrary orientations, a first directional vector is determined from the antenna to a satellite. For each orientation, an alias transformation is performed to transform the first vector having coordinates defined with respect to a first reference frame to a second vector having coordinates defined with respect to a second reference frame. A third vector is determined based on the orientation of the antenna after peaking the antenna. A rotation matrix is derived from the collection of second and third vectors. An estimate of the rotational offset of the satellite antenna with respect to the platform is determined based on the rotation matrix. The rotational offset is applied to the attitude of the platform to accurately point the antenna to the satellite.

Claims28

Dependent claims

A method, comprising:

performing a plurality of alignment procedures for an antenna mounted to a platform at a plurality of orientations of the antenna with a target device to obtain a plurality of peaked pointing vectors:
determining a plurality of projected pointing vectors based at least in part on location and attitude measurements for the platform at the plurality of orientations of the antenna with the target device;
determining that the plurality of performed alignment procedures satisfy a criteria;
determining, based at least in part on the determination that the plurality of performed alignment procedures satisfy the criteria, a rotational offset between a reference frame of the antenna and a reference frame of the platform based at least in part on the plurality of projected pointing vectors and the plurality of peaked pointing vectors;
and
pointing the antenna at the target device based at least in part on the rotational offset;
and
communicating via the antenna with the target device based at least in part on pointing the antenna at the target device.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Mobile terminal antenna alignment using arbitrary orientation attitude

Life of this patent

Mobile terminal antenna alignment using arbitrary orientation attitude

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims28