ERA Technology and Chelton Electrostatics (CEL) have developed leading-edge adaptive antenna control electronics to protect commercial and military satellite navigation receivers from interference or intentional 'jamming'.

With the current proliferation of satellite navigation receivers and their use in a diverse range of applications, these systems are increasingly susceptible to unwanted interference. This interference can reduce positioning accuracy or, in some circumstances, result in a complete loss of data.

Most sources of interference are terrestrial with significantly greater signal levels than navigation data received from a satellite. Although current navigation receivers incorporate protection measures to filter this out, there are still situations where this is ineffective defence. As a result, ERA and CEL have co-developed a Digital Antenna Control Unit (DACU) to demonstrate the use of adaptive array antenna technologies that solve this problem.

The DACU incorporates the latest digital receiver technology. The adaptive processor is based around state-of-the-art 1500 pin Field Programmable Gate Arrays operating at over 300 MHz. The DACU will be used in a MoD trial with an eleven element Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna (CRPA) to determine the effectiveness of the approach for a number of operational satellite navigation scenarios.

Dr Neil Williams, Technical Director at ERA, said: "This project clearly demonstrates Cobham's world-class electronics design and development capability and our ability to provide solutions to complex technical problems."

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