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:
Mar. 18, 2003
Filed:
Apr. 04, 2000
Karl Eric Miller, Chandler, AZ (US);
Price Andrew D'Antonio, Phoenix, AZ (US);
Curtis Alan Provance, Gilbert, AZ (US);
Kenneth Joseph Doerr, Phoenix, AZ (US);
Steven Brian Leeland, Scottsdale, AZ (US);
Motorola, Inc., Schaumburg, IL (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for steering beams modulated from a mobile platform in a manner that reduces overall platform payload processing, and therefore payload weight and power requirements. According to the present invention, a beam steering data calculator ( ) generates a table of beam steering data sets ( ), with each data set corresponding to a specific beam-pointing angle mapped to a corresponding cell on the surface of the earth. A data set that corresponds to a received downlink cell address ( ) is read out from the table and mapped to the downlink address, and an output angle of a modulated vehicle beam ( ) that transmits a data packet to the cell address is corrected to correspond to the beam-pointing angle of the read-out data set. The generated table of beam steering data sets ( ) is then re-used for an application-specific quantization time for mapping subsequently-received downlink addresses with beam steering data sets, thereby obviating the need to provide real-time updates of data sets on a packet transmit interval basis. In addition, the present invention is capable of compensating for numerous other causes of beam-pointing error, thereby improving overall beam-pointing accuracy.