Receiver design for geo-location and/or phase coherent processing

摘要

A receiver system using commercially available super high-speed data converters that are able to directly digitize at multiple GHz sampling rates with sufficient accuracy to fit many radio applications. Unlike conventional receivers, no down converters or mixing stages are required. Instead it uses a bank of RF filters from which the desired RF filter, based on the frequency band of interest, is switched in. The frequency spectrum scan rate is very fast as the settling time for the simple RF front-end is small and the speed of RF switching is high. The filtered output is digitized at a multiple GHz sampling rate and all signal processing is done by FPGA or a combination of FPGA and/or a general-purpose processor.

主权项

1. A method for synchronizing a plurality of radio frequency receivers, the method comprising:
a) providing said plurality of radio frequency receivers, each one of said radio frequency receivers being equipped with an ultra high speed clock for clocking a reception of radio signals for said receivers, said receivers being for synchronizing with one another, said ultra-high speed clock having a frequency of at least one gigahertz; b) deploying each of said plurality of radio frequency receivers to a single physical location to thereby locate said plurality of radio frequency receivers at said single physical location; c) simultaneously activating said clocks of said plurality of radio frequency receivers using a common trigger to thereby synchronize said clocks of said plurality of radio frequency receivers to one another; d) placing each of said plurality of radio frequency receivers in hibernation such that each radio frequency receiver's clock is operational and continues its clocking; e) deploying each of said radio frequency receivers to different locations such that each of said radio frequency receivers is physically remote from each other;wherein said plurality of radio frequency receivers are used to determine a time of arrival of said radio signals.