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US 9,709,372 B2Granted
Semi-active RF target detection and proximity detonation based on angle-to-target
AssigneeRaytheon Company
InventorJeffrey C. Edwards
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A semi-active RF proximity fuze for warhead detonation is provided where external RADAR is available to illuminate the target. The fuze incorporates multiple receiving antennas with digital phase detection processing to distinguish the angle from which the target returns are received and uses that information to determine the detonation timing for the warhead. Detonation timing can be improved by processing the rate of change of the angle-to-target or processing the range and Doppler information to compensate for target velocity and distance.
Claims20
An apparatus, comprising:
- a projectile adapted to pass in proximity to a target, said projectile including a plurality of RF antennae having at least one rear-facing lobe configured to receive pulsed radiation directly from an RF source and at least three forward-facing lobes configured to receive reflections of said pulsed radiation from the target;
- an explosive warhead;
- and
- a multi-channel receiver comprising a plurality of processing channels coupled to said plurality of RF antennae that together feed digital samples of received pulsed radiation to a digital signal processor, said digital signal processor comprising sample memory to receive and store digital samples from the at least one rear-facing lobe and each of said forward-facing lobes, at least three match filters to correlate the digital samples of each of said at least three forward-facing lobes to the digital samples from the at least one rear-facing lobe to match the digital samples of the RF source to the samples of reflections of said pulsed radiation from the target, a phase comparator to compare a phase relationship between the matched digital samples from the at least three forward-facing lobes and the at least one rear-facing lobe to generate via triangulation a sequence of angle-to-target estimates and detonation timing logic to process the angle-to-target estimates to issue a detonation command to detonate the explosive warhead.
1 more element
A proximity fuze for a projectile, comprising:
- a plurality of RF antennae having at least one rear-facing lobe configured to receive pulsed radiation directly from an RF source and at least three forward-facing lobes configured to receive reflections of said pulsed radiation from the target;
- and
- a multi-channel receiver comprising a plurality of processing channels coupled to said plurality of RF antennae that together feed digital samples of received pulsed radiation to a digital signal processor, said digital signal processor comprising sample memory to receive and store digital samples from the at least one rear-facing lobe and each of said forward-facing lobes, at least three match filters to correlate the digital samples of each of said at least three forward-facing lobes to the digital samples from the at least one rear-facing lobe to match the digital samples of the RF source to the samples of reflections of said pulsed radiation from the target, a phase comparator to compare a phase relationship between the matched digital samples from the at least three forward-facing lobes and the at least one rear-facing lobe to generate via triangulation a sequence of angle-to-target estimates and detonation timing logic to process the angle-to-target estimates to issue a detonation command to detonate the explosive warhead.
A method of proximity detonation of a projectile, comprising:
- receiving and conditioning an RF signal at each of at least one rear-facing lobe configured to receive pulsed radiation directly from an RF source and at least three forward-facing lobes configured to receive reflections of said pulsed radiation from a target;
- converting the RF signal to a sequence of digital samples;
- correlating the digital samples of each of said at least three forward-facing lobes to the digital samples from the at least one rear-facing lobe to match the digital samples of the RF source to the samples of reflections of said pulsed radiation from the target;
- comparing a phase relationship between the matched digital samples from the at least three forward-facing lobes and the at least one rear-facing lobe to generate via triangulation a sequence of angle-to-target estimates;
- and
- processing the angle-to-target estimates to issue a detonation command to detonate the explosive warhead.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.