Reception Optimization Strategies for UHF Mobile Beacons

Reception optimization strategies seek to improve performance of directional signals to a receiver location. When performance improves, transmitters may operate with a lower power requirement and significantly reduce detectability through direction-finding attempts. Combined with Direction-of-Arrival estimation, a uniform linear array is used to optimize reception of mobile telemetry signals in the 466 MHz range. A time-delay beamsteering algorithm is implemented on a dipole antenna array to receive in the direction of an estimated signal with an overall gain of 3 dBi. A similar approach is simulated using diversity analysis with a signal-to-noise improvement of 7dBi. This study validates the aforementioned methods for directional selectivity using commercial-off-the-shelf configurations with the popular RTL-SDR dongle.