RAPID IN-THE-FIELD AUTO-ALIGNMENT FOR RADIO FREQUENCY AND FREE-SPACE OPTICAL DATA COMMUNICATION TRANSCEIVERS

摘要

A local communications apparatus is aligned with a remote apparatus, each apparatus comprising radio frequency (RF) and free space optical (FSO) transceivers with substantially parallel boresight. Coarse alignment is performed using the RF transceiver and fine alignment is performed using the FSO transceiver. A patterned search is performed to locate the RF signal from the remote apparatus and known features of the intensity profile are utilized to locate the global maximum, thus coarsely aligning the pair of apparatuses. A second patterned search is performed to locate the FSO signal from the remote apparatus and an iterative step-search is used to align the FSO signal centroid with the FSO transceiver, thus finely aligning the pair of apparatuses.

主权项

1. A method for aligning a local apparatus with a remote apparatus comprising:
adjusting an orientation of the local apparatus according to a first search pattern; detecting a radio frequency (RF) signal from the remote apparatus; adjusting the orientation of the local apparatus, the adjustment increasing an intensity of the detected RF signal; adjusting a field-of-view of a free space optical (FSO) transceiver of the local apparatus according to a second search pattern; detecting a FSO signal from the remote apparatus; and performing an iterative step search to align the FSO transceiver with the detected FSO signal.