Geometric solution for targeting airborne DF resources.

Abstract

The ability of an airborne direction finding (DF) system to accurately fix target emitters depends heavily on the aircraft/target geometry and the duration of target emissions. Based on this, a computer model was developed to aid in the study of the effects of system parameters on fixing success and to help in constructing a procedure for finding optimum search patterns. The development of the computer model is traced from its foundation in current technology to its evolution into an interactive computer graphics system. With the computer model studies were made of the effect of one, two and three aircraft on fixing success. Also, simulation of DF missions using two aircraft were used to study the effects of target signal duration and target position on fixing success. As a result of the study a procedure using interactive graphics was developed to find optimum or near optimum patterns of flight for various airborne DF missions.