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:
Dec. 31, 2002
Filed:
Sep. 28, 2001
Hal L Levitt, Baltimore, MD (US);
Sokhom Kith, Fairfax, VA (US);
Dale L. Reynolds, Elizabeth, CO (US);
The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Navy, Washington, DC (US);
Abstract
A signal processing apparatus for providing electrical frequency measurements of input signals. In one embodiment, a power splitter divides an RF input signal into first and second input signals. An RF channelizer having a filter bank receives the first input signal and determines a coarse frequency measurement. An optical modulator modulates an optical carrier signal with the second input signal, and a beam splitter divides the modulated carrier signal into a plurality of optical signals that each feed into one of a plurality of optical frequency discriminators (“OFD”). Each OFD uses a fiber optic delay line and spatial domain sampling techniques to extract a phase measurement. An ambiguity resolver receives the phase measurement from each OFD and determines a single, absolute phase measurement, which is translated to a fine frequency measurement. A frequency encoder combines the coarse and fine frequency measurements to produce a final frequency measurement having increased resolution.