Date of Award

3-14-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

John F. Raquet, PhD.

Abstract

This research effort investigates the feasibility of beamforming using a single Global Positioning System (GPS) front end. Traditional methods of beamforming use multiple front ends, typically one per antenna element. By enabling a receiver to sample a switched antenna array, the hardware cost of implementing a GPS antenna array can be significantly reduced. Similar techniques of reducing the number of receivers have been used by Locata Corporation in the design of their non-GPS positioning systems. However, Locata Corporation's local transmitters provide a signal strength much higher than GPS's signal strength. For this reason, the inclusion of low-noise amplifiers into the GPS based system was investigated. GPS data was collected using a multiple channel antenna array. Simulated switching was then performed to combine the four channels of data in to a single channel of switched data. Next, a GPS receiver using correlator beamforming was developed to apply the necessary phase shift to each data sample and form an antenna beam in the direction of the desired satellite. The switched data was processed and analyzed with the receiver. The results successfully demonstrated the potential for correlator beamforming to be used with GPS signals. Additional experiments were performed with simulated GPS data to further characterize the capability of the receiver.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-ENG-14-M-10

DTIC Accession Number

ADA599107

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