METHOD FOR ESTIMATING THREE-AXIS ATTITUDE OF PHASED-ARRAY ANTENNA, AND ANGULAR LOCATION OF RECEIVER

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To estimate the precise three-axis attitude of a space-borne phased-array antenna. SOLUTION: On the assumption that the array geometry, consisting of the number of elements and their relative spacings in three dimensions, is known and that the array position and coarse knowledge of the array attitude are available as a priori, gains of a set of complex-valued gains that define each element's straight-through contribution to the signals received at each of remote calibration sites are estimated. Optimization strategy is then used, to determine which array attitude that lies in the neighborhood of the coarsely known attitude is most consistent with the complete set of straight-through gain values. COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT