QUASI-OPTICAL SIGNAL PROCESSING UTILIZING HYBRID MATRICES

• US 3,731,217 A
• Filed: 04/03/1970
• Issued: 05/01/1973
• Est. Priority Date: 04/03/1970
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Carl W. Gerst, Charles G. Simpson, Hugh A. Hair, Robert A. Worden, Robert G. Hiller
• Original Assignee: Carl W. Gerst, Charles G. Simpson, Hugh A. Hair, Robert A. Worden, Robert G. Hiller
• Inventors: Gerst, Carl W., Hair, Hugh A., Hiller, Robert G., Simpson, Charles G., Worden, Robert A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Brody, Alfred L.
• Application Number:
  US05/025,523
• Time in Patent Office: 1,124 Days
• Field of Search: 330/124,56 307/241,242 333/11 328/96,152 325/445,446 343/854 340/172.5,166 332/11
• US Class Current: 330/56
• CPC Class Codes: H01P 5/16 Conjugate devices, i.e. devices having at least one port decoupled from one other port
• CPC Class Codes: H01Q 3/40 with phasing matrix

Abstract

A microwave signal processing device comprises a first phasetransform matrix having a plurality of input ports and a plurality of output ports. Signals in a first domain applied to the input ports are power divided and phase coded upon transmission to the output ports. These signals at the output ports which have been transformed into a power distributed phasecoded domain are applied to the input ports of an operator matrix which changes the characteristics of the signals. The signals at the output ports of the operator matrix are applied to the input ports of a second phase-transform matrix which retransforms the signals to the first domain and transmits the retransformed signals from its output ports.

Claims

1. The method of processing a plurality of alternating-current microwave signals being received in parallel and each having frequency, phase and amplitude parameters comprising the steps of transforming each one of the alternating-current microwave signals into another plurality of parallel phase-transformed alternating-current microwave signals having frequency, phase and amplitude parameters, each of said phase-transformed alternatingcurrent microwave signals having a phase which is different from the phase of at least another phase-transformed alternatingcurrent microwave signal and including a portion of the microwave energy of each of the received alternating-current microwave signals whereby a folded sampled Fourier transform is performed on the received alternating-current microwave signals, modifying at least one of said parameters of each of said parallel phasetransformed alternating-current microwave signals, and inversely transforming the parameter-modified parallel phase-transformed alternating current signals to provide a further plurality of parallel output alternating-current microwave signals.

2. A microwave-signal processing system comprising:

a first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix;

said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix comprising a set of at least four input ports and a set of at least four output ports, and power dividing and phase shifting means reciprocally coupling each port of one set of ports to every port of the other set of ports for transferring at least some fractional quantity of any microwave signal received at any one port of one set of ports to every port of the other set of ports with at least some of the fractional quantities of microwave signal having different signal-phase relationships;

a second power dividing and pahse-transforming matrix identical to said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix, said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix comprising a set of at least four input ports and a set of at least four output ports, and power dividing and phase shifting means reciprocally coupling each port of one set of ports to every port of the other set of ports for transferring at least some fractional quantity of any microwave signal received at any one port of one set of ports to every port of the other set of ports with at least some of the fractional quantities of microwave signal having different signal-phase relationships;

an operator matrix comprising at least one input port and at least one output port;

means for connecting said one input port only to said one output port for changing a characteristic of a microwave signal received at said input port when transferred to said output port;

means for connecting at least one of the output ports of said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix to the input port of said operator matrix; and

means for connecting the output port of said operator matrix to at least one of the input ports of said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix;

at least one of the input ports of said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix being adApted to receive a microwave signal; and

at least one of the output ports of said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix being adapted to transmit a microwave signal.

3. The microwave-signal-processing system of claim 2 further comprising a substantially reflectionless microwave-energy-dissipation means connected to each of the remaining input and output ports.

4. The microwave signal processing system of claim 2 wherein said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix has n output ports and said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix has n input ports, said operator matrix has n input ports and n output ports, each one of said n input ports of said operator matrix being connected to a different one of said n output ports of said operator matrix, respectively, means for connecting each one of said n output ports of said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix to a different one of said n input ports of said operator matrix, respectively, and means for connecting each one of said n output ports of said operator matrix to a different one of said n input ports of said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix, respectively.

5. The microwave-signal processing system of claim 2 wherein said first and second power dividing and phase-transforming matrices have a given frequency pass band, and said power dividing and phase shifting means thereof transfer the signals received at any one of the input ports of one of said power dividing and phase-transforming matrices to all output ports of the same power dividing and phase-transforming matrix as long as the received microwave signals have frequencies within said given frequency pass band so that each output port of said same phase-transforming matrix transmits microwave signals having all the frequencies of the microwave signal received by any one of the input ports of said one power dividing and phase-transforming matrix.

6. The microwave-signal processing system of claim 2 wherein a plurality of the input ports of said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix are adapted to receive microwave signals and a plurality of output ports of said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix are adapted to transmit microwave signals.

7. The microwave-signal-processing system of claim 2 wherein said operator matrix comprises a plurality of microwave signal amplifiers, each having an input and an output, said input being an input port of the operator matrix and said output being an output port of said operator matrix, means for connecting each of the output ports of said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix to the input of one of said microwave-signal amplifiers, respectively, and means for connecting each of the corresponding input ports of said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix to the output of one of said microwave-signal amplifiers, respectively, at least two of the input ports of said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix being adapted to receive different microwave signals and at least two of the output ports of said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix being adapted to transmit different microwave signals whereby said microwave-signal-processing system is a multichannel amplifier.

8. The microwave-signal processing system of claim 7 wherein said first and second power dividing and phase-transforming matrices have 2n input ports and 2n output ports, n of the input ports of said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix being adapted to receive a microwave signal, n corresponding output ports of said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix being adapted to transmit a microwave signal, and further comprising a plurality of substantially reflectionless microwave-power-dissipation means each connected to one of the remaining input and output ports, respectively.

9. The microwave-signal procEssing system of claim 8 wherein said operator matrix comprises n microwave-signal amplifiers each having an input terminal and an output terminal, means for connecting the input terminal of each signal amplifier to a different input port of said operator matrix, respectively, and means for connecting the output terminal of each signal amplifier to a different output port of said operator matrix, respectively, whereby there are n parallel amplifier channels in said operator matrix.

10. The microwave-signal-processing system of claim 2 wherein said operator matrix comprises a plurality of signal-delay means, each of said signal-delay means having an input terminal and an output terminal, means for connecting each of the input terminals to one of the output ports of said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix, respectively, means for connecting each of the output terminals to one of the input ports of said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix, respectively, and further comprising a substantially reflectionless microwave dissipation means connected to all but one of the input ports of said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix, said one input port being adapted to receive microwave energy having a spectrum of frequencies and the output ports of said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix being adapted to transmit microwave-energy whereby said microwave-signal-processing system is a comb filter.

11. The microwave-signal-processing system of claim 10 wherein each of said signal-delay means has a different time delay.

12. The microwave-signal-processing system of claim 11 wherein the difference in the time delays is an integral multiple of a given time delay.

13. The microwave-signal-processing system of claim 12 wherein the time delays sequentially increase.

14. The microwave-signal-processing system of claim 2 wherein said operator matrix comprises a plurality of microwave-signal mixers, each of said microwave-signal mixers including a signal input, a signal output and a mixing-signal input, means for connecting each of the signal inputs of said microwave-signal mixers to one of the output ports of said first power dividing phase-transforming matrix, respectively, means for connecting each of the signal outputs to one of the input ports of said second power dividing phase-transforming matrix, respectively, and means for applying a different frequency microwave-mixing signal to each of the mixing-signal inputs, respectively, the input ports of said power dividing phase-transforming matrix being adapted to receive microwave signals and at least one of the output ports of said second power dividing phase-transforming matrix being adapted to transmit a microwave signal whereby said microwave-signal-processing system is a scanner.

15. The microwave-signal-processing system of claim 14 wherein the frequencies of the microwave-mixing signals are offset from each other by an integral multiple of n Hertz.

16. The microwave processing system of claim 15 wherein the microwave-mixing signals have frequency differences which sequentially increase.

17. The microwave-signal processing system of claim 2 further comprising a plurality of microwave-signal oscillators, means for connecting each of the microwave-signal oscillators to one of the input ports of said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix, said operator matrix comprising a partially reflective microwave-signal transmission means including an input and an output, means for connecting said input to one of the output ports of said first power dividing and phase-transforming matrix, means for connecting said output to one of the input ports of said second power dividing phase-transforming matrix, a substantially reflectionless microwave-energy dissipation means connected to each of the remaining input ports of said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix and to each of the remaining output ports of said first power diviDing and phase-transforming matrix, at least one of the output ports of said second power dividing and phase-transforming matrix being adapted to transmit a microwave signal.