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:
Jul. 29, 1997
Filed:
Sep. 28, 1995
Richard J Sand, Torrance, CA (US);
George L Gaskell, East Manhattan Beach, CA (US);
Michael L Wells, Newhall, CA (US);
Hughes Electronics, Los Angeles, CA (US);
Abstract
A closed-loop missile tracking system (10) employs a missile (12) with a thermal beacon (22) and an optical beacon (24). A target designator (40) defines a boresight from a missile firing location, such as an aircraft, to a target. The closed-loop missile tracking system (10) employs a first tracker (48) and a second tracker (64) with a forward looking infrared (FLIR) sensor (52) to track the displacement of the optical beacon (22) and thermal beacon (24) from the boresight. The first tracker (48) generates a first set of azimuth and elevation error signals. The second tracker (64) further includes a video demultiplexing interface (70) which transforms serial multiplexed video signals, which are output by the FLIR sensor (52) and contain a field with M rows and L columns of pixels, into a demultiplexed parallel video signal. A video thermal tracker (VTT) (58) selects the N adjacent horizontal rows of pixels and generates a second set of azimuth and elevation error signals therefrom. The VTT (58) selects at least one of the first set of error signals, the second set or a combination thereof to guide the missile (12).