ICTC 2014 1570002279

A Mathematical Perspective of Single-Channel

Pseudo-Monopulse Tracking Receiver Design
Jaesin Kim, Jinwoo Jung, Jae-Moon Lee and Ui-Young Pak
The 2nd R&D Institute - 1
Agency for Defense Development (ADD)
Daejeon, Korea
jaesin.kim@gmail.com, {jjw, xhxhfh, puy}@add.re.kr

Abstract— This paper considers a single-channel pseudo-

monopulse tracking receiver system which is capable of
processing both aerial vehicle antenna tracking and its
downlink data signal reception. In order to obtain the
single-channel monopulse ratio (MR) curve near to a
conventional three-channel MR curve, we mathematically
define two objective functions in terms of minimizing
mean squared error. By solving these two problems
numerically, local optimal design parameters are obtained.

Keywords— Single-channel, pseudo-monopulse, tracking,

minimum mean squared error

I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology
for military surveillance missions has improved [1].
Importantly, the ground transceiver terminal should track a
transmit antenna of the fast maneuvering UAV as well as
receive a high capacity downlink signal. To this end, we can Figure 1. Simplified block diagram of the SCPMTR
consider the single-channel pseudo-monopulse tracking
receiver (SCPMTR) with high accuracy and simple
implementation for use in ground terminals of the UAV system By assuming an equal power signal combiner, the output
[2]-[4]. power of the signal combiner in the in-phase mode and that
in the out-of-phase mode can be expressed as [5]
In this paper, we focus on establishing mathematical
objective functions in order to obtain the single-channel and (1)
monopulse ratio (MR) curve near to a conventional three-
channel MR curve. The objective functions are defined in (2)
terms of minimizing mean squared error (MSE) between the where the input power of the signal combiner in the error signal
single-channel MR curve and the three-channel MR curve.
path is calculated as and the input power of
With the numerical solutions, we offer local optimal design
parameters. Especially, we can consider a proper trade-off the sum signal path is expressed as . Finally,
between the minimization of the MSE and the sum or error the MR of the SCPMTR, is derived as [2]
signal power level. (3)
II. SYSTEM MODEL
In this section, we describe a simplified system model of
the SCPMTR illustrated on Fig. 1. Here, we omitted the In (4), the MR of the conventional three-channel system, is
antenna feeding part formed in a comparator. The inputs of the defined as and the SCPMTR design parameter to
SCPMTR , and denote the power of the elevation be optimized, is represented as
error signal, the azimuth error signal and the sum signal,
respectively. Also, the SCPMTR consist of two amplifiers and
their dB-scale gains in the error signal path and the sum signal
Note that both and are positive real values.
path are indicated as and , respectively.

978-1-4799-6786-5/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 874 ICTC 2014

1
 1.8

1.6
1
1.4
0.8
1.2
0.6
1

MSE
MSE

0.4
0.8
0.2
0.6
0
0.4 4 X: 0.07
Y: 1.22
0.2
3 Z: 4.689e-006
0.2 X: 0.0574 0.15
Y: 1.863e-006 2 0.1
0 0.05
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 1 0
 


Figure 2. Numerical result for the objective function I Figure 3. Numerical result for the objective function II

III. OBJECTIVE FUNCTIONS AND NUMERICAL RESULTS By dividing by , we have the following objective function
which is a joint minimization problem.
In what follows, we propose two objective functions and
show numerical results to minimize the MSE between our
single-channel MR curve and the conventional three-channel
MR curve.
.
A. Objective function I
First, the problem of minimizing the MSE between the Likewise, since an analytic solution might not exist in (7), we
conventional three-channel MR, and the SCPMTR’s MR, search a local optimal solution with the same constraint
under all can be written as .
Fig. 3 represents the MSE graph according to the design
parameter and . Local optimal value, and are
and , respectively. At this point, the
. minimum MSE is . Dark blue color area in Fig.
3 means a relatively low MSE region. Therefore, we can select
The minimization problem in (5) might not be trivial to solve
a desired at the expense of the lowest MSE. For example,
analytically. Therefore, we find a local optimum solution with
although the MSE is 2 , which is larger than the
numerical approach and a constraint . A constraint
previous minimum MSE, we can obtain in the
bound of is determined by a required tracking range based on
the designed antenna sum/error gain patterns. In this study, we case of , which means dB. In
referred to a value presented in [2]. addition, when , the MSE and are and
, respectively. As a result, we can adjust the SCPMTR
The numerical result in Fig. 2 shows the MSE curve with system performance and implementation requirements by
respect to the design parameter . Here, we can observe that balancing between and .
the minimum MSE is at where
is transformed as dB. Note that small REFERENCES
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