A system and method for a second wireless device to establish distance and location of a first device which is transmitting radio waves includes the first and second devices. Each second device includes two or more (N in number) receiving antennas. An angle between the directions in which adjacent receiving antennas receive the strongest signals is 360/N. The second device obtains a received signal strength indicator (RSSI) of each receiving antenna receiving signals from the first device, and from the two strongest receiving antennas, calculation of an angle between the first device and one of the adjacent receiving antennas can be performed. The distance between the first device and the second device can also be calculated.

Techniques are disclosed for determining AOA of one or more radar pulses received at a vehicle and originating from a source. The techniques are particularly well-suited to provide pilots with a more accurate determination of the azimuth angle to the radar source, although ground-based and water-based vehicles may benefit as well. Some embodiments discussed herein determine a true estimation of both azimuth and elevation angles, with reference to an aircraft's body-centered coordinate system, to the radar source. These parameters can also be used to determine a more accurate position on the ground for the radar source.

The invention relates to a method and a device for estimating an angle of arrival of an incident radio signal in relation to a predetermined reference direction by using a set of N receiving paths comprising at least one directional antenna pointing in N different receiving directions, wherein only one sub-set of at least two receiving paths with adjacent antenna directions in said set of antennas delivers a measured power at reception.

The device comprises modules suitable for: determining a number of receiving paths delivering a measured power forming said sub-set, and a reference index corresponding to a first receiving path in a direction in which extends the set of antenna directions of said sub-set; selecting the measured powers and obtaining a value to attribute to the non-measured powers to form a completed power signal; by applying a discrete Fourier transform (DFT) to said completed power signal, calculating at least one transformed value among the transformed values corresponding to a first, second, and third frequency line of the DFT; and, using the transformed value(s), applying an estimator of the angle of arrival, depending on the reference index.

An apparatus for indicating a direction of a radio transmission is described. The apparatus includes at least one vector detection device including two or more antennas and an attenuating material between at least one of the antennas and a source of a radio transmission. The attenuating material is arranged to vary an amount of attenuation with an angle of the source with respect to at least one of the antennas. The apparatus is configured to generate a signal indicating a direction of the radio transmission by comparing received signal strengths from the two or more antennas.

There is described a device for determining an angle of arrival of a received RF signal, the device comprising (a) a first antenna and a second antenna arranged with a predetermined distance between them on an antenna axis, the first antenna having a larger gain than the second antenna for directions corresponding to one side of the antenna axis, the second antenna having a larger gain than the first antenna for directions corresponding to the other side of the antenna axis, (b) receiver circuitry coupled to the first antenna and to the second antenna, the receiver circuitry being configured to determine a first phase and a first signal strength of a signal received by the first antenna and to determine a second phase and a second signal strength of a signal received by the second antenna, and (c) angle determining circuitry configured to determine the angle of arrival based on the first phase, the second phase, the first signal strength, and the second signal strength. There is also described a corresponding method, a computer program, and a computer program product.

An exemplary radio-frequency (RF)-based navigation reference system uses one or more non-collocated and time-synchronized direction-finding transmitters to enable a client receiver to estimate its own 3-D position, velocity and time (PVT) using direction-finding (DF) waveforms obtained from said reference transmitters. At least one reference transmitter is sufficient for obtaining a 3-D PVT solution provided the client receiver is equipped with an accurate (low-drift) local clock such as a chip-scale atomic clock (CSAC). All other client receivers require at least two reference transmitters to estimate their 3-D PVT.

In one aspect, a method of wireless communication by a wireless device includes generating, by the wireless device, a protocol data unit (PDU) header and a corresponding PDU payload of an angle of arrival (AoA) packet. The generating of the PDU payload includes inserting a supplemental field and a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) field into the PDU payload. The supplemental field is configured to enable another wireless device to determine an angle of arrival of the AoA packet and the CRC field corresponds to a CRC of at least the supplemental field. The method also includes transmitting the AoA packet with a single antenna of the wireless device.

In one aspect, a method of wireless communication by a wireless device includes generating, by the wireless device, a protocol data unit (PDU) header and a corresponding PDU payload of an angle of arrival (AoA) packet. The generating of the PDU payload includes inserting a supplemental field and a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) field into the PDU payload. The supplemental field is configured to enable another wireless device to determine an angle of arrival of the AoA packet and the CRC field corresponds to a CRC of at least the supplemental field. The method also includes transmitting the AoA packet with a single antenna of the wireless device.

An apparatus for indicating a direction of a radio transmission is described. The apparatus includes at least one vector detection device including two or more antennas and an attenuating material between at least one of the antennas and a source of a radio transmission. The attenuating material is arranged to vary an amount of attenuation with an angle of the source with respect to at least one of the antennas. The apparatus is configured to generate a signal indicating a direction of the radio transmission by comparing received signal strengths from the two or more antennas.

A millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication system for determining a location of a first device based on a known location of a second device includes a transceiver connected to a set of antennas to communicate beams of mmWaves and to perform an estimation of a channel connecting the first device and the second device and a memory to store results of the channels estimation including pairs of beam values, wherein each pair of beam values includes a beamforming angle and an energy of the beam communicated with the beamforming angle. The system also includes a processor operatively connected to the memory and configured to select from the memory multiple pairs of beam values corresponding to beamforming communication sharing the same dominant path connecting the first device and the second device, to determine a direction of the dominant path by evaluating a beamforming model for the selected pairs of beam values, and to determine the location of the first device arranged along the direction of the dominant path with respect to the location of the second device.