Software-defined radio system for tracking application

摘要

Projectile tracking with a ground station is a standard for establishing a secured communication with the said projectile. The antenna array at the ground station is often electronically steered using analog components, requiring to redesign the circuitry for each application and frequency range. On the other hand technological advances in software defined radio (SDR) led to affordable radios allowing the user to reprogram the performed signal processing and the working frequency over a large range, without modifying the hardware. This work presents a system able to electronically steer antenna arrays in order to follow a moving transmitter using two synchronized SDRs operational from 10 MHz to 6000 MHz. The direction of the transmitter is computed using Direction of Arrival (DoA) estimation. Measurements of a 4 element uniform linear array (ULA) and a 4×4 planar array-operating at 2300 MHz and at 3100 MHz respectively — were carried out in an ISL anechoic chamber.