空基网络定向天线对准与跟踪技术综述

Review on alignment and tracking technologies of directional antenna in air-based networks

为了满足宽频带、大容量、远距离和多成员等未来通信需求,定向天线逐渐广泛地投入应用。由于定向天线只在某些特定方向上收发电磁波,相比于全向天线其隐蔽性和抗干扰性强,增加了辐射功率的有效利用率,因此能扩大通信距离,更好地适应多节点的复杂环境。但同时该特性也使得“定向天线对准”成为了研究热点,尤其是为了缓解通信频段变高后传播损耗带来的影响,定向天线波束收窄,导致对准难度进一步加剧;而空基环境中通信双方高速运动,如何保持实时跟踪也成为关键问题。因此针对空-空应用场景,综述定向天线对准及跟踪过程中指向求解、角度测量和波束跟踪等方法,并讨论分析了各方法的优缺点;总结出以轨迹预测为辅助,基于坐标-信号联合跟踪控制方案的系统架构,说明了定向天线对准及跟踪技术的潜在挑战和未来的发展方向。

In order to meet the requirements of future communication such as wide band,large capacity,long distance and multi-member,directional antenna has been gradually and widely used.The directional antenna only sends and receives electromagnetic waves in some specific directions,compared with the omnidirectional antenna,it has good concealment and anti-interference abil‐ity,and increases the effective utilization of radiation power,so it can expand the communication distance and adapt to the com‐plex environment of multi-member better.But at the same time,this feature makes“directional antenna alignment”become the hot spot of research.The beam gets narrower in order to alleviate the influence of propagation loss when the communication fre‐quency gets higher,which intensifies the difficulty of alignment.And both communication parties move at a high speed,how to keep the antenna tracking in real time is another crucial.Therefore,aiming at the air-to-air scenario,this paper summarizes the methods of pointing solution,angle measurement and dynamic tracking,and discusses both the advantages and disadvantages of each method.Then the system architecture based on a control scheme combining coordinate tracing strategy and signal tracing strategy aided by motion prediction is concluded,and the potential challenges and future development of directional antenna alignment and tracking technology are also illustrated.