Methods of arranging transducers and transducer arrays having reduced phase ambiguity for determining direction of arrival of received signals
AssigneeThe Boeing Company
InventorWayne Workman
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Method of arranging transducers, including non-coplanar interferometer antennas on the outer surface of an aircraft, to minimize phase ambiguities when determining the direction of arrival of a signal received by an array of the transducers and emitted by a source remote from the array.
Claims20
A method of arranging a plurality of spaced transducers having phase errors in order to use the transducers to determine a direction of arrival of a signal emitted by a source, said method comprising:
- determining a set of trajectories for the plurality of transducers and determining the number of ambiguities corresponding to the set of trajectories;
- modifying the relative position of the transducers;
- determining a modified set of trajectories for the plurality of transducers after modifying the position and determining the number of ambiguities corresponding to the modified set of trajectories;
- comparing the number of ambiguities corresponding to the set of trajectories to the number of ambiguities corresponding to the modified set of trajectories;
- and
- arranging the transducers according the position which corresponds to less ambiguities.
A method of arranging a plurality of spaced transducers having phase errors in order to determine a direction of arrival of a signal emitted by a source, said method comprising:
- determining a set of trajectories for a preset number of the plurality of transducers and determining the number of ambiguities corresponding to the set of trajectories;
- modifying the preset number of the transducers;
- determining a modified set of trajectories for the plurality of transducers after modifying the preset number and determining the number of ambiguities corresponding to the modified set of trajectories;
- comparing the number of ambiguities corresponding to the set of trajectories to the number of ambiguities corresponding to the modified set of trajectories to determine the more tightly grouped set of trajectories;
- and
- arranging an array of the transducers having a number of transducers which corresponds to the set with less ambiguities.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.