Simultaneous azimuth and elevation measurements using amplitude comparison

The author summarises a method for implementing an amplitude comparison technique appropriate to simultaneous azimuth and elevation determination over a wide field of view. By making suitable approximations to the antenna beam shapes an approximate linear relationship between signal direction and amplitude difference is obtained. The solution to the resulting equations is simple to implement in dedicated hardware and two possible methods are discussed. One requires the minimum number of measurements (two) but requires beam shape calibration and resolution of an ambiguity in sign, the other requires at least three measurements but overcomes both these minor deficiencies. The theory is also applicable to interferometer arrays with multiple arbitrary baseline orientations and no approximation is involved in deriving the matrix relationship