Unmanned vehicle autopilot enabled smart phased array antenna

A smart phased array antenna suitable for resource constrained mobile platforms is proposed and demonstrated. The design leverages processing and sensor capabilities in a commercially available unmanned vehicle autopilot to provide real-time platform motion compensation and acquisition and tracking of a moving transmitter. Six-Degree of Freedom (6-DOF) autopilot sensors measure platform motion to maintain phased array beam pointing by continuously updating a digitally controlled RF beamformer. A switched beam algorithm discovers and tracks a moving transmitter based on transmit signal angle of arrival (AOA). The design of an X-band prototype integrating a 1×8 antenna array and RF beamformer on a single printed circuit board (PCB) is presented. Experimental results from the hardware prototype are presented. To the authors' knowledge, this work is the first demonstration of a low cost unmanned vehicle autopilot to enable phased array antenna motion compensation, communication link acquisition and mobile transmitter tracking capabilities.