NON-COOPERATIVE POSITION, NAVIGATION, AND TIMING EXTRACTION FROM VSAT COMMUNICATIONS SIGNALS USING MULTI-BEAM PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA

    公开(公告)号:US20230258820A1

    公开(公告)日:2023-08-17

    申请号:US18135520

    申请日:2023-04-17

    摘要: A ground antenna determines the current time and its own position from received signals that were transmitted by artificial earth satellites for communication. A high-gain multi-beam electrically-steered antenna is combined with a processing system to measure the angles between two or more satellites and determine the present distance to each satellite by the information broadcast on the TT&C channel. The knowledge of the angles and distances, as well as the trajectory of the satellites, can be combined with their locations as predicted by the satellite ephemeris data to triangulate the location of the receiver. This system is different from conventional GPS antennas because it does not require the cooperation of active communication with the satellites to derive a location estimate. The location is computed by the ground terminal, not by the satellite. This system can be used in cases where other locating services are offline, jammed, or otherwise unavailable to maintain location and time synchronization.

    Circuit and system apparatus for synthesizing one or multiple beams on a switched-feed antenna

    公开(公告)号:US11870154B2

    公开(公告)日:2024-01-09

    申请号:US17084396

    申请日:2020-10-29

    摘要: A circuit has at least one amplifier and a signal routing device such as one or more switches, and an array of antenna elements from which some subset must be enabled and processed at a time. The antenna elements can be grouped in accordance with an organization scheme (e.g., rows, columns) to enable more flexibility in selecting and routing the signals. The system is used to create one or more beams, which can be pointed (steered) to a wide range of directions by means of selecting one or more feed antennas in a switched-feed antenna without including full receive and transmit circuitry (DSP, frequency conversion) for each feed in the array. In this case, minimizing the number of DSP chains is desirable to reduce the cost, power, and complexity of the antenna. The resulting beam(s) can be combined and manipulated to support multiple users, track several targets, increase operational range, increase radar resolution, or data-rate in communications.

    GAIN ROLL-OFF FOR HYBRID MECHANICAL-LENS ANTENNA PHASED ARRAYS

    公开(公告)号:US20230275346A1

    公开(公告)日:2023-08-31

    申请号:US18313200

    申请日:2023-05-05

    IPC分类号: H01Q3/04 H01Q19/06

    CPC分类号: H01Q3/04 H01Q19/06

    摘要: A hybrid mechanical-lens array antenna is described that can be configured with different orientations and arrangements of the plurality of lenses within the array to control and enhance the performance at different regions of scan. This can include the addition of a secondary array (a skirt) at a large tilt angle, tilting the primary array, tilting the individual lenses within the primary array, or any combination. These design choices, when holding the number of lens modules (and, therefore, cost and power consumption) constant, have the effect of changing the system height, reducing the boresight gain and increasing the gain at scan, with each option showing different trades of height and scan and boresight performance.

    PLANAR MULTIBEAM HYBRID-ELECTROMECHANICAL SATCOM TERMINAL

    公开(公告)号:US20230246345A1

    公开(公告)日:2023-08-03

    申请号:US18103365

    申请日:2023-01-30

    IPC分类号: H01Q19/06 H01Q3/46 H01Q25/00

    摘要: A lens array antenna system that includes a plurality of lens modules, each consisting of an RF lens and a plurality of feeds forming a linear feed region or feed array. Multiple linear feed regions supporting different frequency bands may be used. The lenses and array of feeds jointly rotate and are slidably connected to allow the location of the linear feed region relative to the focal locus of the lens to be changed by an actuator and controller to allow any two focal points corresponding to desired beam scanning directions to be covered by the linear feed region. In this way, a planar hybrid electromechanical beamforming antenna can form two independent beams in the upper hemisphere with only two mechanical actuators and a single axis of electronic beamforming, reducing production cost compared to existing multibeam antenna solutions.