Estimation of the Time Efficiency of a Radio Direction Finder Operating on the Basis of a Searchless Spectral Method of Dispersion-Correlation Radio Direction Finding

An analytical estimation of the total time consumption of a radio direction finder operating according to the searchless spectral method of dispersion-correlation radio direction finding is performed. The dependence of the relative time efficiency on the bandwidth of the direction finding radio receiver is studied. As a result of the modelling, it was determined that under the conditions of minimal hardware costs, i.e. when using a single-channel data processing system, it was determined that the investigated search-free direction finding method provides real-time direction finding of radio emissions falling within the frequency band of simultaneous analysis with a possible width of up to 250 MHz. Comparative analysis has shown that the investigated direction finding method has a high relative time efficiency, which is 45 times higher than the known search digital spectral correlation-interferometric direction finding method. It has also been determined that for the known search method of direction finding, a significant increase in the discreteness of direction finding estimation worsens the direction finding accuracy by up to 1°, and the use of a multiprocessor processing scheme increases the cost of the direction finder. These studies are a continuation of the work on the development of search-free spectral methods of correlation-interferometric direction finding.