WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE (WSMR) A PHASE - DIFFERENCE MEASURING TRACKING SYSTEM

Abstract

The Phase Difference Measuring (PDM) system is an RF interferometer object tracking system which utilizes the object’s radiated telemetry power spectra for tracking purposes. The PDM system is being developed in-house at White Sands Missile Range as a highly mobile electronic angle measuring system, to augument existing position measuring capability in range instrumentation systems. The system is comprised of two Remote Data Acquisition Stations (RDAS) and a Cosine Conversion Facility (CCF). Each RDAS is comprised of two antenna arrays configured as crossed baselines. The RDAS equipment utilizes high speed RF switching in a time sharing technique designed to reduce the amount of hardware required at the remote sites to produce direction cosines. The CCF collects two direction cosines from each RDAS, it then transforms the direction cosines to position data for subsequent transmission to a Range Control Center. This paper will provide basic system theory, explain the proposed antenna PF switching techniques, and also the computer simulation analysis for a baseline consisting of two pair of antennas.