METHOD OF CALIBRATING MOBILE SHORTWAVE DIRECTION FINDER WITH MULTIELEMENT ANTENNA ARRAY Russian patent published in 2012 - IPC G01S7/40 

FIELD: physics.

SUBSTANCE: invention can be used to calibrate radio signal source direction finders, particularly mobile shortwave (SW) direction finders with a multielement antenna array (AA). The method involves measuring the required number of positions of the radiator for control measurements, the distance between the position of the control radiator (CR) and the closest antenna component (AC) and the coordinate of the positions for installing the CR; receiving a control signal for an N-element distributed AA; frequency selection and measurement of the phase of the received signal pulses; selection of a reference AC, after which CR are successively installed at each given position; determining the initial disparity of measurements of phase difference between each (N-1)-th and the reference AC; and the mean-square deviation (MSD) of the measurement results is calculated; through successive iterations, adjustments are made to the estimate of true coordinates of the AC and the estimated phase defects of feeders and the disparity of phase difference between each (N-1)-th and the reference AC for each position of the CR is re-determined, thereby achieving the minimum attainable MSD of measurement results; and the coordinate values of phase centres of the AC and allowable values of phase offset of the AA feeders, needed for measuring bearings, with minimum error, to signal sources monitored by the mobile direction finder, are determined.

EFFECT: high accuracy of calibrating a mobile shortwave direction finder with a multielement antenna array.

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