Time Space Coherence Interferometry
Author: Dan Slater
Publication: AMTA 2012
Copyright Owner: NSI-MI Technologies
Streaming SDR (software defined radio) communication receivers are now high performance, common place and cost effective. Yet these receivers are not easily used for antenna measurements for a variety of reasons including their inability to accept phase reference and measurement trigger information. A new technique called Time Space Coherence Interferometry (TSCI) solves this problem in a simple and elegant manner. TSCI combines the concepts of temporal phase coherence with spatial division multiple access (SDMA) to directly encode phase and spatial information into a single continuous receiver data stream. The stream can be recorded for later analysis or efficiently decoded in real time producing conventional spatially sampled S21 amplitude and phase measurements. Additional data including antenna pulse timing, dynamics and signal quality metrics can be extracted from the TSCI data stream. Several representative TSCI systems are described.