Integrated module controller
AssigneeITT Corporation
InventorDev D. Rathi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An improved system is disclosed for controlling the operation of a transmit/receive module in a phased-array antenna system. The improved module control system of the invention is implemented in a simple integrated circuit chip and may be co-located with a transmit/receive module positioned at an antenna array element. Either fully distributed or row/column distributed beam steering architecture may be implemented by the improved module control system with both speed of operation and cost advantages realized over prior art systems.
Claims15
In an active array antenna system comprising beam steering computation means, for computing array phase and gain settings, beam shaping means for applying beam shaping and tapering terms to said computed array phase and gain settings, and a transmit/receive means including phase shifting means, gain control means, power amplifying means, low-noise amplifying means and transmit/receive switching means, the improvement therein comprising, in combination therewith:
- RF device control means operable to control said operating elements included in said transmit/receive means;
- and
- RF device phase and amplitude correction means operable to compensate for errors associated with said operating elements included in said transmit/receive means;
- wherein said RF device control means and said RF device phase and amplitude correction means are operationally integrated within a common module.
An active array antenna comprising:
- beam steering computation means, for computing array phase and gain settings;
- beam shaping means for applying beam shaping and tapering terms to said computed array phase and gain settings;
- a plurality of transmit/receive modules, each including phase shifting means, gain control means, power amplifying means, low-noise amplifying means, and transmit/receive switching means;
- and
- means for controlling each of said transmit/receive modules, including;
- RF device control means operable to control said operating elements included in said transmit/receive means and
- RF device phase and amplitude correction means operable to compensate for errors associated with said operating elements included in said transmit/receive means;
- wherein said RF device control means and said RF device phase and amplitude correction means are operationally integrated within a common module.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.