RF-Signal Receiver for UAV-Based Characterisation of Aeronautical Navigation Systems

This contribution presents measurements with a self-built high frequency receiver architecture for nearfield measurements without synchronization between devices under test and the receiving stage that can be mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle. It comprises a stationary monitor with a fixed location and a monitor, that can vary in space to measure the phase and amplitude dependency with respect to its location, as required for nearfield measurements and farfield transform. One application for that is the nearfield inspection of navigation systems. The measurement concept also applies laser tracking of the variable monitor and a sophisticated synchronization of the measured high frequency data and location data. In particular, real time capability of data acquisition is validated with this setup. First measurement results demonstrate the functionality of the architecture that allows an unsynchronized phase accuracy of better than 8° at 2 GHz.