Spot beam antenna boresight calibration using GPS receivers
AssigneeThe Boeing Company
InventorsJonathan A. Tekawy, Kevin M. O'Brien
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method and apparatus for calibrating such a spot beam antenna by use of scanned spot beam signal characteristics measured by a plurality of ground based navigation receivers is disclosed.
Claims20
In a system for determining the location of a plurality of navigation receivers via reception and processing of navigation signals transmitted from a constellation of navigation satellites, an apparatus for calibrating a signal boresight of a navigation satellite antenna of at least one of the navigation satellites, comprising
- a command module, for commanding the navigation satellite intenna to transmit a signal to one or more of the navigation receivers using a known amplitude profile and scan profile;
- a reporting module, disposed in each of the one or more navigation receivers, for reporting data describing the received signal;
- and
- a boresight calibration module, for determining the boresight of the navigational satellite antenna from the data describing the received signal from each of the one or more navigation receivers and the known amplitude profile and scan profile.
In a system for determining the location of a plurality of navigation receivers via reception and processing of navigation signals transmitted from a constellation of satellites, a method of calibrating a signal boresight of a navigation satellite antenna, of at least one of the navigation satellites comprising the steps of:
- scanning the navigational satellite antenna to transmit a signal to one or more of the navigation receivers using a known amplitude profile and scan profile;
- receiving data describing the received signal from each of the one or more navigation receivers;
- and
- determining the boresight of the navigational satellite antenna from the data describing the received signal from each of the one or more navigation receivers and the known amplitude profile and scan profile.
In a system for determining the location of a plurality of navigation receivers via reception and processing of navigation signals transmitted from a constellation of satellites, an apparatus for calibrating a signal boresight of a navigation satellite antenna of at least one of the navigation satellites comprising:
- means for scanning the navigational satellite antenna to transmit a signal to one or more of the navigation receivers using a known amplitude profile and scan profile;
- means for receiving data describing the received signal from each of the one or more navigation receivers;
- and
- means for determining the boresight of the navigational satellite antenna from the data describing the received signal from each of the one or more navigation receivers and the known amplitude profile and scan profile.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.