METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DETERMINING ANGULAR ORIENTATION OF AIRCRAFT Russian patent published in 2015 - IPC G01S5/00 

FIELD: radio engineering, communication.

SUBSTANCE: method includes separating three antenna elements from a total of M antenna elements lying in one plane; determining preliminary coordinates thereof; specifying the required accuracy e of determining aircraft coordinates based on the Gauss-Seidel method and the golden section; refining the aircraft coordinates by maximising the target function BΣ. The search for the maximum of BΣ for each combination αi, θi, βi is carried out until the length of the interval of the gold section is shorter than the predefined value e. Similarly, using one-dimensional optimisation method based on the gold section with accuracy e, coordinates of all M antenna elements of the antenna array are determined, followed by refined reference values of phase differences Δ_φet.m0(αi, βi, θi). The apparatus which realises the method comprises M identical receiving channels, M≥3, a reference signal generating unit, a clock generator, S correlators, S analysis units, S+1 switches, a correlator initial setting unit, a radio navigation device, a control unit, S subtractor units, a memory unit, first and second computer-formers, a decision unit, first and second computers, a display unit and four input adjustment buses. The listed devices are connected to each other in a certain manner.

EFFECT: high accuracy of estimating the angle of roll α, bearing angle θ and the pitch angle of aircraft.

2 cl, 18 dwg