Wide-Aperture Digital VOR

The very high frequency (VHF) omnirange has undergone a number of evolutionary changes in the past 30 years. Early measurements of large errors led to the development of the Doppler VHF omnidirectional irectioal range (VOR) and its use. Further developments have been the precision multilobe VOR and the precision Doppler VOR. Interest in area navigation has led to the desire for a VOR greatly superior to any so far developed. Specifically, the objectives of the improved VOR would be a system that would significantly reduce magnitude of siting errors, provide greater accuracy and use digital techniques to simplify processing. ssing. The wide-aperture digital VOR described herein has been developed to meet these objectives. Its design is based on the crossed-pair interferometer principle where eight such pairs are energized successively by a set of pulses and phase shifts. The time multiplexed signal, detected by the aircraft receiver, is processed and simple digital computations are performedto determine the angular coordinates. The performance improvements have been achieved by the combination of using a 275-ft antenna aperture, and the use of digital techniques to generate the ground-radiated navigational signals and to process them in the airborne processor. Field tests of the feasibility model indicate it is a high performance ance system, capable of achieving an order of magnitude improvement in both site error reduction and in accuracy compared to present VOR systems. The measured accuracies were 0.11-degree standard deviation.     

电分相电弧对全向信标电磁辐射特性的分析

为了分析电气化铁路高速列车电分相电弧对机场全向信标（VOR）的影响,研究其电磁发射特性。利用电磁干扰接收机与频谱仪,分别以点频和扫频方式,对电气化铁路电分相点和普通点进行了大量辐射测试。分析测试数据的异方差性,改进回归分析方法,拟合出电弧在全向信标频段的幅频特性曲线,分析弓网电弧电磁辐射对机场全向信标的影响。结果表明：电分相电磁辐射是随机的,在电分相处比普通点大;现代电气化铁路高速列车经过电分相的测试数据异方差性比较明显,普通的最小二乘估计方法不适用;当电气化铁路电分相点与飞机距离小于4.944 km时,可能会对VOR信号产生影响。     

Supplements to Active Filters in the VOR

This paper covers some important advances in understanding the problems associated with the VOR system, especially in connection with area navigation. Anomalies arising from airborne equipment, operating in the airborne environment, are described and analyzed. Factors contributing to overall system accuracy are treated with respect to VOR receiver response and to rate-limiting, filter means, with special attention to appropriate noise reduction systems providing zero or minimal time delay characteristics. The use of active filters in the VOR receiver is shown to be of major importance with regard to signal improvement and overall system accuracy. Active filters of the constant slew rate type have proved of significant value, both within the VOR receiver as well as in signal processing.     

Another Source of VOR Omni Error

In the vicinity of reflecting objects, a VOR receiver picks up both the direct and reflected signals. This summation adds both amplitude and phase modulation to the signal that were not present at the transmitter. The error due to this phase modulation is fairly evident since the desired directional information is transmitted as a relative phase. What is not so evident is the fact that the amplitude modulation can also produce a phase error. This happens when asymmetrical filters are used to process the amplitude-modulated signal. The asymmetrical filter converts some of the amplitude-modulated sidebands into phase modulation which is recorded as a direct phase error.     

Sole means navigation in US Navy aircraft

The current edition of the US Federal Radionavigation Plan, issued in 1984, presents a consolidated federal plane on the management of those radionavigation systems which are used by both the civilian and military sectors. It states the US Dept. of Defense (DoD) goal to phase out the use of TACAN, VOR/DME, OMEGA, LORAN C, and TRANSIT in military platforms and for Global Positioning System (GPS) to become the standard radionavigation system for DoD. This would eliminate all the current sole-means air navigation systems (TACAN and VOR/DME) aboard military aircraft. Instrument Flight Rule (IFR) operations within controlled airspace requires an operating sole-means air navigation system to be aboard the aircraft. The authors investigate the requirements for GPS certification as a sole means air navigation system in the US National Airspace System (NAS); discuss the implication for GPS user equipment (UE) hardware and software; describe the actual UE implementation; and discuss approaches for UE integration with flight instruments on US Navy aircraft     

Uniform Sampling Analysis of a Hybrid Phase-Locked Loop with a Sample-and-Hold Phase Detector

Phase-locked-loop (PLL) bit synchronizers often employ integrate-and-dump type phase detectors that provide phase error information only at discrete points in time. Usually these phase detectors are followed by sample-and-hold circuits to produce a stairstep error voltage as the input to a standard analog circuit loop filter. When the loop is configured in this manner, it is referred to as a hybrid PLL. Sampled-data analysis methods (Z transforms) are used to determine the stability and transient response of this loop.     

Phase-Frequency Detection in Sampled Phase-Locked Frequency Mlultipliers

Phase-locked high-frequency multipliers which do not have powergreedy frequency dividers in the feedback loop, but which do have a sample-and-hold circuit as a phase detector are hard to design, due to conflicting requirements which determine the choice for loop gain and loop bandwidth. A circuit is described that acts as a frequency control if the loop is not locked and as a phase control once the loop can be locked. The loop filter has to be optimized for the locked condition only, and the allowable preset error is more than 80 percent of the sample frequency. The circuit also indicates whether the oscillator frequency is an odd or an even multiple of the sample frequency. Pull-in is at least an order of magnitude faster than with phase control alone.     

Effects of Finite Wire Scatterers in the Field of VOR

A computer-oriented general formula is developed to estimate the dynamic bearing errors of an airborne VOR receiver due to arbitrary bent finite wire scatterers located in the vicinity of a VOR. The current in those wires caused by the incident fields from the VOR is computed by a piecewise-sinusoidal reaction technique. The variations in the incident fields over the wire and the mutual coupling effects between close wires are taken into account.     

小振幅振动翼型升力迟滞环变向的成因分析

在低雷诺数条件下研究了SD7037翼型小振幅强迫振动时，振动轴位置和减缩频率对翼型气动特性的影响。通过升力系数随时间变化曲线与迎角随时间变化曲线的对比，发现引起升力系数随迎角变化的迟滞环变向的原因主要是升力系数随时间变化曲线的相位发生变化，并从数学上证明了这个相位是关于减缩频率的函数。而且，当升力系数随时间变化曲线的相位变大时，会使得对应的升力系数随迎角变化的迟滞环曲线从逆时针向顺时针方向变化，这中间必然会经历一个"直线"过程，就好像迟滞现象消失了一样。进一步通过对比流场，发现振动轴位置和减缩频率对此相位的影响机制不同，振动轴位置主要改变翼型的有效迎角，而减缩频率的增大则影响了周围流场结构，使得附加质量带来的反作用力变大，进而提高升力，振动轴向前移动和减缩频率的增大都会增大升力系数曲线的相位。     

Theory of Scalloping Amplitude Errors in Standard VOR Bearing Indications

A rigorous theory is developed for the course scalloping amplitudes observed in the bearing indications of an airborne standard VOR receiver in the presence of multipath signals. The VOR transmitting antenna pattern characteristics, the scattering properties of the multipath source, and the effects of ground reflection are all built into the theory so that their combined effects on the scalloping may be quantitatively investigated. The analysis assumes that the VOR receiver characteristics are ideal.     

Phase-Locked Loop Behavior near Threshold

The phase-locked loop behavior is analyzed following the quasilinearization Booton's method. When the loop is locked on an unmodulated input signal with a static phase error, the phase detector nonlinearity produces an interaction between the static phase error and the voltage-controlled-oscillator (VCO) noise phase fluctuations. Formulas allowing one to compute the static phase error increase and the VCO phase variance increase are derived. When the input signal is phase modulated, there is an interaction between the static phase error, the VCO noise phase fluctuations, and the input signal phase modulation. Formulas are obtained that allow one to compute the loop loss of performances (static phase error increase and VCO phase variance increase) and the coherent phase demodulator output signal-to-noise ratio decrease. Finally, a slight modification to Booton's procedure is proposed, leading to results in better agreement with experimental data.     

基于提前停止判决的编码软信息辅助载波同步

 针对目前编码辅助载波同步算法中复杂度较高、延时大的问题,提出了引入辅助停止判决机制的编码辅助载波同步算法。在现有的编码辅助载波同步结构基础上,该算法能对环路信噪比(SNR)进行实时判定,在环路SNR满足限定条件后提前停止编码辅助载波同步迭代,而不影响译码性能。采用新的相位估计方式估计含相位噪声的载波相位,提升了该条件下的环路信噪比。仿真采用码率为1/2的低密度奇偶校验(LDPC)码作为编码方式,结果表明:在误码率为10^-5时,该算法减少了约50%的编码辅助载波同步迭代次数;在含相位噪声的信号条件下,与理想解调译码相比,性能损失不超过0.15 dB。     

Double Dither Loop for Pseudonoise Code Tracking

A new type of phase detector for pseudonoise code tracking is introduced and analyzed in comparison with the delay lock loop (DLL) and tau-dither loop (TDL) configurations. It is shown that the double dither loop (DDL) combines the best features of the DLL and the TDL in that the DDL is insensitive to gain and offset imbalances and does not suffer the 3-dB degradation in noise performance typically associated with the TDL. The double dither concept is applicable to other dual channel detectors such as in a Costas-type carrier tracking loop.     

Thermal cyclotron radiation from a hot coronal loop with helical magnetic field

The spectral and polarization properties of thermal cyclotron radio emission from a hot coronal loop with a current along the axis are computed. The magnetic field is supposed to have a component along the loop axis as well as a poloidal part due to the current, both components being of comparable magnitude. In this specific configuration a helical magnetic field is present with a remarkable minimum of its absolute value along the loop axis and a maximum at its periphery. The presence of one or two maxima of magnetic field value along the line of sight results in increasing optical thickness of the gyroresonance layers at appropriate frequencies in the microwave band and, therefore, in enhanced radio emission at those harmonics which are optically thin (for example,s=4). These cannot be observed in models with the commonly employed magnetic field configuration (longitudinal along the loop axis).We show that the frequency spectrum of thermal cyclotron radiation from a hot coronal loop with a helical magnetic field differs from that of the standards-component source (with smooth frequency characteristics and polarization corresponding toe-mode) in that plenty of fine structures (line-like features and cut-offs) are present and theo-mode is prevalent in some frequency intervals. The enhanced radio emission at high harmonics and the complicated form of frequency spectrum in the model considered imply that some microwave sources, which are poorly explained in traditional models of solar active regions, may be associated with helical magnetic fields in hot coronal loops. Computations allow one to indicate spectral and polarizational peculiarities of local sources testifying to the presence of a helical magnetic field.     

Carrier loop architectures for tracking weak GPS signals

The performance of various carrier recovery loop architectures (phase lock loop (PLL), Doppler-aided PLL, frequency lock loop (FLL), and Doppler-aided FLL) in tracking weak GPS signals are analyzed and experimentally validated. The effects of phase or frequency detector design, oscillator quality, coherent averaging time, and external Doppler aiding information on delaying loss of lock are quantified. It is shown that for PLLs the metric of total phase jitter is a reliable metric for assessing low C/N performance of the tracking loop provided the loop bandwidth is not too small (~> 5 Hz). For loop bandwidths that are not too small, total phase jitter accurately predicts carrier-to-noise ratio (C/N) at which loss of lock occurs. This predicted C/N is very close to the C/N predicted by bit error rate (BER). However, unlike BER, total phase jitter can be computed in real-time and an estimator for it is developed and experimentally validated. Total phase jitter is not a replacement for BER, since at low bandwidths it is less accurate than BER in that the receiver loses lock at a higher C/N than predicted by the estimator. Similarly, for FLLs operating at small loop bandwidths, it is found that normalized total frequency jitter is not a reliable metric for assessing loss of lock in weak signal or low C/N conditions. At small loop bandwidths, while total frequency jitter may indicate that a loop is still tracking, the Doppler estimates provided by the FLL will be biased.     

Phase-Shift-Keyed Signal Detection with Noisy Reference Signals

This paper derives and graphically illustrates the performance characteristics of Phase-Shift-Keyed communication systems where the receiver's phase reference is noisy and derived from the observed waveform by means of a narrow-band tracking filter (a phase-locked loop). In particular, two phase measurement methods are considered. One method requires the transmission of an auxiliary carrier (in practice, this signal is usually referred to as the sync subcarrier). This carrier is tracked at the receiver by means of a phase-locked loop, and the output of this loop is used as a reference signal for performing a coherent detection. The second method is self-synchronizing in that the reference signal is derived from the modulated data signal by means of a squaring-loop. The statistics (and their properties) of the differenced-correlator outputs are derived and graphically illustrated as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio existing in the tracking filter's loop bandwidth and the signal-to-noise ratio in the data channel. Conclusions of these results as well as design trends are presented.     

Automated VOR Ground Check Techniques

Field conversions of many conventional VOR and VORTAC facilities to remote maintenance monitoring, which includes provisions for automated VOR ground check procedures, has been under way in the United States since 1982. A question that has arisen as a result of this effort concerns the minimum number of ground-check points that must be used in order that the bearing-error function can be resolved into its octantal as well as its quadrantal and "duantal" components. Some fundamental considerations relating to that question are examined here.     

Preliminary Evaluation of GPS Performance for Low-Cost General Aviation

Preliminary results of a simulation effort to evaluate the requirements and feasibility of the global positioning system (GPS) as a civil air navigation system are presented. Evaluation is made of GPS requirements, from operational considerations, such as application to nonprecision approaches. The conceptual low-cost GPS receiver simulated here does not correct for the ionospheric or trophospheric delay, is sequential in nature, tracks only four satellites, and is not mechanized to make independent range rate measurements based on the Doppler shift of the GPS carrier frequency. The proposed GPS system has significantly different performance characteristics from the presently used VHF omnidirectional range (VOR) solidus distance-measuring equipment (DME) system. The GPS is a low signal level system and many have a relatively slow data rate due to the low-cost sequential receiver design. The results indicate that although the conceptual low-cost GPS receiver/ navigator is potentially more accurate than a VOR, the accuracy may degrade during aircraft turns and satellite shielding periods.     

Improved Phase-Locked Loop Performance with Adaptive Phase Comparators

A major problem in phase-locked loop (PLL) design is to meet the requirements of both fast signal acquisition and good synchronous mode performance. This relation is reviewed for different types of phase comparators. As a result a new phase-and-frequency comparator is proposed. This comparator is based on an up-down counter principle and can be considered as an adaptive acquisition control circuit. The analysis of a PLL with the proposed phase comparator is based on an exact calculation method for the pull-in time. It is shown that fast signal acquisition is possible without affecting the filtering properties of the loop. Experimental results are given of the acquisition behavior of a second-order type-2 loop which show a good correspondence with the theoretical analysis.     

Reference Loop Phase Shift in an N-Element Adaptive Array

Adaptive arrays based on the LMS algorithm require the generation of a reference signal which is usually derived from the array output. A particular problem associated with this technique is that of a phase shift in the reference signal loop. The effects of this phase shift on the performance of an N-element adaptive array are discussed. It is shown that a reference loop phase shift causes the array weights to cycle, thereby frequency translating the signals at the output. The weight-cycling frequency is related to various system parameters of an N-element array. In particular, it is observed that the cycling frequency increases as the number of antennas (N) increases.