G01S3/04

Rotatable antenna apparatus

A rotatable antenna apparatus has a fixed unit for attachment of the apparatus to an external structure, and a rotatable unit mounted on the fixed unit for rotation relative to the fixed unit. The rotatable unit comprises both an antenna assembly and processing circuitry coupled to the antenna assembly for performing signal processing operations. The apparatus further includes a thermally conductive shaft connected to the rotatable unit and located for rotation within the fixed unit, and a thermally conductive coupling structure to conduct heat from one or more heat generating components of the processing circuitry into the thermally conductive shaft. A heat sink within the fixed unit is thermally coupled to the thermally conductive shaft to draw heat away from the thermally conductive shaft. This provides an efficient mechanism for removing heat from the rotatable unit, whilst still allowing the rotatable unit to be sealed against external environmental conditions.

DIRECTION FINDING ANTENNA FORMAT

A method of direction finding (DF) positioning based on a simplified antenna platform format in a wireless communication network is proposed. A receiver receives antenna platform format information of a transmitter having multiple antenna elements. The antenna platform format information comprises an antenna platform format indicator, antenna platform position and orientation information, a number of antenna elements, and switching delay, phase center, and polarization information for each antenna element. The receiver receives a plurality of direction finding sounding signals transmitted from the transmitter via the multiple antenna elements. The receiver performs a DF algorithm based on the plurality of DF sounding signals and the antenna platform format information and thereby estimating a DF solution. Finally, the receiver determines its own location information based on the estimated DF solution.

EFFICIENTLY MEASURING PHASE DIFFERENCES IN AN ANGLE OF ARRIVAL SYSTEM

An angle of arrival system is configured to efficiently measure phase differences. The angle of arrival system includes a master receiver for demodulating the signal received at one antenna and for implementing a tracking loop to identify the timing of symbols within the signal. This timing information can be fed back as a synchronization signal to a despreader in the master receiver and to a despreader in each of a number of slave receivers to synchronize the timing at which each signal is despread. Because despreading is synchronized, the outputs of the despreaders can be used to directly calculate phase differences between each pair of signals. In this way, the slave receivers do not need to implement a demodulator or a tracking loop. When the received signal is a non-spread signal, the phase differences between each pair of signals can be calculated directly from the modulated samples of each pair of signals without despreading.

Facility mapping and interactive tracking
10430832 · 2019-10-01 ·

A portable electronic device configured to function as an electronic identifier in a facility, a high security zone, an amusement park, a city, and a hotel, and to display an interactive graphical map of the facility, the high security zone when authorized, the amusement park, the city, and hotel facilities when authorized is disclosed, as well as a facility mapping and visitor tracking system with security zone map views, amusement park map views, and city map views, and a set of facility mapping and visitor tracking processes are disclosed.

ENTANGLED RADIOFREQUENCY-PHOTONIC SENSOR SYSTEMS AND SENSING METHODS
20240142559 · 2024-05-02 ·

A reconfigurable sensor network uses continuous-variable (CV) multipartite entangled quantum states for distributed RF sensing with uncertainties below the standard quantum limit. A CV multipartite entangled state is generated with a quantum circuit that splits a squeezed vacuum state into spatially separated optical modes that are entangled. Each optical mode is transmitted to a RF-photonic sensor that imposes, on the corresponding optical mode, a quadrature displacement based on the local properties of an RF signal. A homodyne detector then measures the quadrature displacement. A post-processor combines the measurements to estimate a global property of the RF signal, such as an angle-of-arrival. To enable distributed sensing over large distances, the RF-photonic sensors may be spatially separated by several kilometers, or more. Alternatively, the RF-photonic sensors may be integrated into a single photonic system, such as a photonic integrated circuit.

DIRECTION OF ARRIVAL ESTIMATION
20190293743 · 2019-09-26 · ·

Iterative methods for direction of arrival estimation of a signal at a receiver with a plurality of spatially separated sensor elements are described. A quantized estimate of the angle of arrival is obtained from a compressive sensing solution of a set of equations. The estimate is refined in a subsequent iteration by a computed error based a quantized estimate of the direction of arrival in relation to quantization points offset from the quantization points for the first quantized estimate of the angle of arrival. The iterations converge on an estimated direction of arrival.

RFID Antenna Array For Gaming

An RFID system includes multiple antennas and uses amplitude and phase information of the RFID signals received by each antenna to determine the position of RFID tags in the vicinity. More than one antenna can receive the RFID signals during a single read cycle, enabling the RFID system to operate more quickly than a system that energizes antennas separately.

DETERMINING THE GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION OF A MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS DEVICE USING A POSITIONING REFERENCE SIGNAL
20190277943 · 2019-09-12 · ·

A communications device includes: a receiver configured to receive signals including at least one positioning reference signal transmitted in each of a plurality of time units, at least one antenna connected to the receiver; a motion detector configured to determine a relative local position of the communications device; and a controller configured to generate a measurement data set including plural measurement samples of at least a phase of the positioning reference signal according to a sampling rate, and a location of the communications device at which the phase of the positioning reference signal was determined. The controller is configured to estimate a relative angle of arrival of the received radio signals, used to determine an estimation of a location of the communications device, wherein the controller is configured to adapt at the rate of sampling to generate the measurement data set in accordance with predetermined conditions.

ANGLE OF ARRIVAL ESTIMATION IN A RADIO COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK

There is provided mechanisms for estimating angle of arrival of a radio signal in a radio communications network. A method is performed by a radio transceiver device. The radio transceiver device comprises an antenna array that, by means of analog beamforming, is configured to shift between at least two phase center locations. The method comprises obtaining measurements of the radio signal as received by the antenna array using two mutually different phase center locations. The method comprises estimating the angle of arrival of the radio signal using the measurements as obtained using the two mutually different phase center locations.

Electromagnetic Vector Sensor Noise Mitigation
20190280724 · 2019-09-12 ·

A radio receiver is made much more immune to jamming signals. A vector EM sensor, in a 2-dimensional (3-axis sensor) or 3-dimensional (6-axis sensor) sensor configuration, is combined with a unique digital rotation to a preferred direction to create a new reference channel and, using an advanced frequency domain noise mitigation algorithm or other noise cancellation algorithm, can effectively reject jamming and other interference signals and improve the signal-to-noise ratio (20-40 dB) and the receiving performance of the receiver. The method can cancel both near-field and far-field interference and improve accuracy for various applications concerned with establishing the direction, or bearing, to a source. A communication receiver with the vector sensor and the cancellation algorithm has unique anti-jamming capabilities even for multiple jamming sources.