Using Directional-Finding and AoA

This topic describes the procedure for performing an AoA directional-finding measurement.

AoA (Angle of Arrival) is used for direction finding by measuring the angle of signal arrival at multiple receivers to locate emitters.

Setting up and Running an AoA Measurement

  1. Add receivers required for your measurement.

  2. Click the Directional-Finding tab and then select AoA.

  3. From the Receivers section on the right, select the checkboxes for receivers that you want to use in your AoA measurement.

A minimum of three receivers are required for an AoA directional-finding measurement. Learn more, see FieldFox Analyzer Equipment.
Only the receivers that were selected in the TDoA tab view will be available in the AoA tab view.
  1. In the Receivers settings, you can Trigger the antenna by Sequence or State. Sequence is the most commonly used method.

The selected receivers appear on the map on the left. The Map displays the current latitude and longitude of the center of the screen displayed in the map.

  1. From the Session section on the right, click Create Session to initiate a session for the AoA measurement.

  2. From the AoA Settings section on the right, adjust the AoA settings, including the center frequency and bandwidth.

  3. From the Spectrum Settings section on the right, adjust spectrum and receiver settings as per your specific requirements.

Use the Update to All Receivers button in Spectrum Settings section to apply the adjusted settings to all receivers that you have selected for the AoA measurement.
Use the Update button in Spectrum Settings section to apply the adjusted settings only to a selected receiver.

  1. From the Map Settings section on the right, configure map settings to toggle on or off the display of following elements based on what you want to display on the map.

See Example below to know more about these elements on the AoA map.

  1. From the Session section on the right, click Single to run a single AoA measurement to locate target emitter. Click Continuous if you want to run the AoA measurement continuously to track the emitter over time until the Stop button is clicked.

When the AoA measurement is generated, the "Emitter" along with other selected element(s) such as heat map are displayed as shown in the example screen below.

Example of successful target (emitter) tracking with Continuous AoA measurements until Stop is clicked.

  1. View the results on the map and in the table displayed in the AoA Results section below the map.

  2. Click End Session to conclude the session after analyzing emitter data.

Setting Heat Map Persistent Depth for AoA

The Heat Map Persistent Depth setting in AoA > Map Settings section is used to set the depth for which you want to track the heat map path of the emitter over time. It helps you to view the movement and history of the emitter's heat map on the AoA map. This is useful for understanding the emitter's trajectory and behavior.

When set, the Persistent Depth setting leaves a track of the heat map on the AoA map, showing the previous locations of the emitter.

You can adjust the Persistent Depth value to control how much of the emitter's heat map history is displayed. Increasing the depth shows more historical data, while decreasing it shows less. The default value is 0.

Performing AoA in Single Mobile Receiver Scenarios

The Single Receiver settings in AoA > Map Settings section allow AoA to be performed with a single receiver, making it suitable for single equipment mobile situation. This is useful for scenarios where multiple receivers are not available or practical.

With only one receiver, the Single Mobile AoA feature uses single receiver's past measurements to estimate the emitter's location by triangulating the data points where the receiver was previously located.

The Single Receiver settings are available if you have selected only one receiver in the Receivers section on the top. If multiple receivers are selected for the measurement, then these settings are not applicable and are therefore disabled.

You can configure the following two settings for the Single Receiver AoA measurement.

In the example screen below, the AoA measurement is Continuous and the Receiver Location Selection is set to On ensuring that only those measurements are used and shown when there was a receiver movement.

 

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