The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 03, 1989
Filed:
Sep. 06, 1988
Robert W Kress, Saugerties, NY (US);
Grumman Aerospace Corporation, Bethpage, NY (US);
Abstract
A data processing system for a phased array antenna consisting of an array of transmit/receive elements which result in a significant reduction in the data processing requirements for the received signals. In operation, the RF transmitted and received beams are formed and steered in a conventional manner with a phase shifter and amplitude weighting for each element. However, a simplifying approximation is made in the signal processing of the received signals for interference suppression, which results in minimal degradation of the system performance. In such a system, interference suppression is obtained by generating nulls in the receive antenna pattern in the direction of the interference. The nulls are produced by adjusting the phase and amplitude (weight) of the received signal from each array element just enough to null the interference with minimal impact on the rest of the antenna pattern. Pursuant to the present invention, the signal processing requirements are significantly reduced by summing the outputs of adjacent array elements to produce a lesser number of summed signals, less than the number of elements in the array. Each summed signal is then directed to a weighted amplifier controlled to weigh the contribution of the particular summed signal to a composite output signal formed by a composite summing circuit, which sums the weighted output signals of all of the weighted amplifiers.