METHOD OF MEASURING TIME INTERVALS BETWEEN RADIO PULSES Russian patent published in 2012 - IPC G01S13/02 

FIELD: physics.

SUBSTANCE: method of measuring time intervals between the emission of a probing signal and the centre of a reflected signal involves receiving the reflected signal with subsequent analogue-to-digital conversion of that signal from the time of emitting the probing signal, determining the number j_max of a number array element corresponding to the centre of the reflected signal; generating in the vicinity of j_max 2k+1 reference signals whose shape correspond to that of the reflected signal, the centre of each of which is shifted from the centre of reflected signal with time shift j_max*(s/k-1)*b, where s=0, 1, 2…2k, s is the number of the reference, k is a coefficient greater or equal to 3, b is a constant from 0 to 1, which determines the size the vicinity of the centre of the reflected signal. Correlation coefficients of reference signals and reflected signals are calculated; the relationship between correlation coefficients of 2k+1 reference signals and reflected signals KK[m], m=j_max+j_max*(s/k-1)*b, is approximated; oversampling is carried out based on the found approximating relationship for the array KK[m] with increase in the number of array elements by R times; an array KK1[m_I] is formed, where m_I=j_max+j_max*(S₁/(k*R)-1)*b, S₁=0, 1, 2…2k*R, R is an oversampling coefficient greater than 1. The value m_Imax of the array KK1[m_I] which corresponds to the maximum value of the correlation coefficient KK1 is determined; the value m_Imax is taken as the refined centre of the reflected signal and signal processing operations are then repeated with simultaneous reduction of the coefficient b - the size of the vicinity of the refined value of the centre of the analysed reflected signal, after which the value of the time interval T is calculated in time units T=m_Imax*dt, where dt is the time sampling rate when measuring the reflected signal.

EFFECT: high accuracy of measuring time interval between radio pulses.

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