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:
Sep. 09, 2003
Filed:
Jun. 04, 2002
Thomas W. Miller, Yorba Linda, CA (US);
Raytheon Company, Lexington, MA (US);
Abstract
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, a preprocessor is provided for use in an adaptive antenna array. The purpose of the preprocessor is to modify the incoming signals received by each antenna of an antenna array in such a manner as to reduce the amount of computation necessary to compute the adaptive array weights. In an adaptive array, the weight computation process generally requires calculations using digital electronics, which tend to be computationally intensive when applied to wideband, high sample rate signals. The preprocessor of the present invention solves this problem by filtering the data in such a manner as to reduce the sample rate of the signal without losing the essential characteristics of the signal. The preprocessor includes an input terminal for receiving an electromagnetic signal from an antenna element of the adaptive antenna array, and a frequency smearer operatively coupled to the input terminal. The frequency smearer is provided in order to smear the electromagnetic signal by varying the frequency of the electromagnetic signal across a predetermined frequency band and outputting the smeared electromagnetic signal to an averaging circuit. The averaging circuit, which is operatively coupled to the output of the frequency smearer, repetitively computes and outputs an average with respect to time of the smeared electromagnetic signal.