Raytheon Company

Robert A Mika

Irwin L Newberg

Mary G Gallegos

A system and method for automatically generating a return beam in the direction of a received beam. The inventive system ( ) includes a phased array antenna ( ) for receiving a radio frequency signal having a first wavefront from a first direction. In response to this signal, the invention ( ) provides a second signal having a second wavefront. The second signal is a phase conjugate of the first signal and is transmitted in a reverse direction relative to the direction of the first signal. In the illustrative embodiment, the invention includes a plurality of phase conjugators each of which are disposed in a transmit/receive module and coupled to an associated radiating element. Each of the phase conjugators includes a mixer ( ) having the input signal as a first input thereto. The input signal has a first frequency and a first phase. A second signal having a frequency equal to twice the first frequency is input to each mixer ( ) from a reference frequency module ( ) such that the output of the mixer includes a component representative of the negative of the first phase. The output of each mixer ( ) is filtered to extract a signal component having a negative phase relative to the input signal. These signal components are then transmitted as the phase conjugated wavefront. This process will occur for each signal when multiple signals are received within the field of regard of the phased array antenna ( ).

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Manhattan Beach, CA, United States of America

Robert A Mika