Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation

Walter M Dirndorfer

Kenneth M Schmidt

Ronald W Minarik

Benjamin F Weigand

Michael V Pascale

William C Phillips

Arnold B Siegel

Robert S Prill

Paul LePage

John G Holland

Richard H Nogay

A reconfigurable backplane assembly for a programmable digital radio and consisting of a printed wire matrix plate including connectors for electronic circuit modules, power cables, RF cables, and optical cables with the connectivity between digital signals being dynamically reconfigurable electronically and with connectivity between power signals, optical signals and RF signals being manually reconfigurable.

Backplane assembly for electronic circuit modules providing electronic

A radio transmitter is structured to provide frequency hopping of transmitted leakage signals in addition to RF hopping of the RF output signal. A digital computer controls a digital tuner, a TLO, a FLO, and an IF unit to provide the RF hopping and to provide digital-tuner frequency hopping and IF hopping thereby enabling the frequency hopping of transmitted leakage digital tuner and IF signals.

Frequency hopping radio transmitter apparatus and method providing very

A programmable digital radio is configured to perform navigation functions. A receiver in the programmable digital radio receives analog signals from a navigation unit and digitizes the analog signals to produce digital navigation signals. The digital navigation signals are processed digitally and valid navigation information is determined. Processing includes generation of baseband signals including in-phase signals and quadrature signals, AM demodulation, filtering, decimating, demultiplexing, discrete fourier transformation, and function processing according to a selected function. The selected functions may include Localizer, Marker Beacon and Glideslope.

Digitally programmable radio modules for navigation systems

A common transmit module of a programmable digital radio has a digital submodule which receives a bit stream and produces a modulated IF signal, and an analog submodule which receives the modulated IF signal and converts the modulated IF signal to a frequency corresponding to a specific type of radio function. The digital submodule includes (a) a sequential/parallel instruction set processor for signal processing and control, (b) a reconfigurable format unit, and (c) a modulator which receives the output signals of the reconfigurable format unit and produces the modulated oscillation signal. The analog submodule includes (a) a tunable local oscillator that produces a tunable local oscillation signal, (b) fixed local oscillators that produce fixed local oscillation signals, and (c) a mixing unit that receives the modulated IF signal, the tunable local oscillation signal and the fixed local oscillation signals, selectively mixes the fixed local oscillation signals with the modulated oscillation signal to produce non-final IF signals, and mixes a non-final IF signal with the tunable local oscillation signal to produce a final converted signal for transmission at the frequency corresponding to the specific type of radio function.

Common transmit module for a programmable digital radio

A digital submodule is included in a software programmable common receive module for receiving IF signals and producing a serial bit stream. The digital submodule is programmable based on a selected application of a plurality of radio applications and, if present, a selected function of a plurality of functions of the selected radio application. The digital submodule may include an analog to digital converter for converting IF signals received from an analog submodule into digital signals. The digital signals are supplied to a programmable signal processing unit which is configured, according to the selected radio application and, if present, the selected function, to perform control functions, processing and analysis of the digital signals and generate output signals. The output signals are then formatted by a formatting unit producing formatted digital signals. The formatted digital signals are then supplied to a system bus. The programmable signal processing unit may include a digital downconverter for selective use depending on the selected application of radio communication, for generating a base signal. Additionally, a central processing unit is included to perform further signal processing for selected radio application.

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Linthicum, MD, United States of America

Walter M Dirndorfer