SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PASSIVELY ESTIMATING ANGLE AND RANGE OF A SOURCE USING SIGNAL SAMPLES COLLECTED SIMULATANEOUSLY FROM A MULTI-APERTURE ANTENNA

摘要

A system (104) and method (400) for passively estimating range and angle of a source (102) are disclosed. The source may be any wave source including radio-frequency (RF), optical, acoustic or seismic sources. In some RF embodiments, the system includes a single aperture antenna (108) to simultaneously receive RF signals (103) from the RF source (102) through a plurality of sub-apertures (106), and a signal processor (112) to perform a proximity test using samples (111) simultaneously collected from the sub-apertures to determine whether or not to calculate angle and range estimates to the source (102) based on either a curved wavefront assumption or a planar wavefront assumption.