Abstract:

I n point to point communication antenna alignment is a time consuming process which

requires someone to climb up on antenna mast and carry out the alignment manually. During
fixed operations alignment is only carried out once but for military application node have to be
constantly moving, To track and aim antenna fast and accurately with high quality
communication signal. In order to solve this problem we will be designing a way keeping track
of optimal level signal value (LSV) point which is based on course alignment by tracking through
coordinates to find LVS without operator assistance. This not only ensures the connectivity but
also gives us better SNR’s and data rates. Automatic link establishment serves its purpose in
both military and commercial purposes.

The antennas are controlled by motors which move antennas in two dimensions (1.in azimuth
and 2. Elevation angle). The optimal LVS point can be obtained by comparing the respective
LVS’s of azimuth and elevation angle. The method is fast with high precision and can meet
requirement of fast and accurate antenna alignment.

Introduction:
Automatic Link Establishment, known as ALE is a worldwide standard for digitally initiating and
sustaining HF radio communications. ALE is a feature in an HF communications radio
transceiver system that enables the radio station to make contact, or initiate a circuit, between
itself and another HF radio station or network of stations. The purpose is to provide a reliable
rapid method of calling and connecting.

Automatic Link Establishment (ALE) is the system for Radio Frequency (RF) communication. ALE
was developed to automatically select the best channel from the Link Quality Analysis (LQA)
table. For point to point communication in microwaves directional antennas are used to reduce
the receiving and transmission power. ALE establishes a link between itself and another ALE-
equipped radio without operator assistance. Under microprocessor control, ALE modes include
automatic signaling, selective calling, and automatic handshaking. Other automatic functions
related to ALE are channel scanning and selection, link quality analysis, polling, sounding, and
message store-and-forward capabilities. To fully understand how ALE works, you should know
how link quality analysis plays an important function in the overall linking process. Link quality
analysis is an automatic measure of the signal quality between two stations based on bit error
rate (BER) and signal-to-noise and distortion (SINAD).
The basic principle of alignment is that both stations can receive and transmit microwave signal.
However, it is difficult to align the communication antenna at a long distance with the narrow
beam angle of antenna, especially when there is relative motion at both stations. At present
coordinate control method is mostly used for alignment of antennas. Due to noise and
interference, these will result in the power value of the antenna alignment that may be less
than the measurement power value of misalignment. So it is necessary to make an optimal
algorithm for fast alignment to fit the antenna optimal communication signal point of two
stations within the coarse alignment errors range which is based on coordinate coarse tracking
alignment and power scanning strategy to find the LSV.

Along with alignment we have to cater the power losses which will be there. These losses will
be accounted by link budget which accounts all of the gains and losses from the transmitter,
through the medium (free space, cable, waveguide, fiber, etc.) to the receiver in a
telecommunication system. It accounts for the attenuation of the transmitted signal due to
propagation, as well as the antenna gains and feedline and other losses.

A simple link budget equation looks like this:

Received Power (dB) = Transmitted Power (dB) + Gains (dB) − Losses (dB)

Another loss which have to be considered is polarization loss.

Usually, you have two sources of polarization mismatch/losses.To avoid polarization loss we
would align Tx and Rx antenna in the same plane of polarization. Any dynamic condition effect
(due to weather and change in it WRF time), if it is required to have dynamic correction, one
need to provide orientation change mechanism. It looks the output continuously and if any
drop in the signal strength, antenna to be re oriented automatically for maximum signal

Experiment:
In the process of point-to point communication, to track and aim at antenna fast and accurately
is the precondition of high quality communication signal. There will be big errors in the coarse
alignment. Therefore, fine alignment is needed. It is only necessary to search the AE for the
“power maximum” in the errors range of the coarse alignment. But the problem is that there is
noise and interference, so the maximum power of any measurement has a certain errors. These
errors are due to polarization and other losses. The feasible solution is to increase the number
of measurements in the same angle of the antenna, and average these measurements. The
measurement errors are linearly reduced with the increase of the square root of the
measurement time. In this paper, the LSV in AE direction are obtained by scanning,
respectively. The optimal LSV point of two-dimensional can be found by combing optimal LSV
point of two independent one-dimensional turntables. Rotate the antenna to the optimal LSV
point of AE, this point is the best communication location. The premise of the algorithm is that
the measurement errors are Gaussian distribution; it is clear that the actual communication
noise is to meet the requirements. One of the advantages of LSM is that there is no
requirement for the variance of measurement errors and measurement the uniformity of the
coordinates. The algorithm can make full use of all measurement point information of the
optimal LSV point. Defining the alignment center of antenna as the optimal LSV point, the LSV
can be expressed as a polynomial:

𝑝(𝛼, 𝛽, 𝑛) = −𝐴𝑟 2 + 𝑝𝑚𝑎𝑥 + 𝑁𝑛

𝛼, 𝛽 are elevation errors.

A is power drop coefficient

R is distance of elevation error where 𝑟 = √𝛼 2 + 𝛽 2

𝑝𝑚𝑎𝑥 indicates received power

𝑁𝑛 represent measurement angles

If alignment is done in x axis and x=b then 𝑟 = 𝑥 − 𝑥𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟

According to the conventional polynomial, which can be expressed as

𝑦 = 𝑎2 𝑥 2 + 𝑎1 𝑥 + 𝑎0
𝑎1
𝑥𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟 = −
2𝑎2

Now using AX=b and solving for x as

𝑥 = (𝐴𝑇 𝐴)−1 𝐴𝑇 𝑏

and using polynomial equation we can develop a matrix form which we can implement in our
𝑎0
software[𝑎1 ] = (𝐴𝑇 𝐴)−1 𝐴𝑇 𝑏 and by having several iterations of this and taking their averages
𝑎2
and observing the best values we can get optimized results. The theoretical center value of the
antenna is set to 1deg.
For our servo motors load is Antenna, to control the Antenna, it is necessary to have the control
on speed and currents of servo motor apart from controlling the position of load. Hence, these
three controls viz. Speed, Current/ Torque & position of antenna forms essential three control
loops. The motor torque is proportional to the current and hence the purpose of current loop is
to provide a constant torque drive. The PWM inverter driving the 3 motor windings of the 3
phase AC servo motor generates winding voltages proportional to the command, in
synchronization with rotor position. The output of current loop forms input to PWM inverter
thus adjusting the motor voltages until measured current is equal to demand current. Each
motor / amplifier has its own current controller – hence there are two current loops per axis.
The sensed motor current is subtracted from the demand current and filtered through a
controller and fed to the PWM amplifier. The current demand is fed from the outer speed loop.
Hence a speed error. Causes motors to accelerate or decelerate the rate of acceleration is
proportional to magnitude of speed error. The ultimate performance of the servo is decided by
the position loop controller. It encloses the speed loop with its output forming speed demand.
The position error is computed as the difference between commanded position and measured
position. The position feed-back is taken from the encoder by default. In case of fault in the
encoder the position loop is closed by the position sensed through resolver. The position error
(demand position - actual position) is filtered through a position loop compensator (PI). Type II
ensures zero position offset for ramp inputs and a constant offset for acceleration (parabolic)
inputs. Hence, this servo system is capable to provide satisfactory steady-state and transient
response to various types of commands such as step, ramp, and parabolic inputs. These
responses are verified practically.

Results:
The AE direction is scanned within a certain errors range, respectively, fitting the optimal LSV of
AE.

The theoretical center value of the antenna is set to1deg. The LSV reaches the maximum on the
ordinate, approximately -45.85dbm. The fitted value is 1.0135deg, which is very close to the
theoretical center value 1deg. .According to our results, the optimal alignment point of
antennas of both stations can be realized by curve fitting of LSM. However, there may be some
coincidence that one or several times optimal values are close to theoretical value by fitting of
LSM. Therefore, our paper analyzed the value that the optimal points of 20 times and then
compared these values with the theoretical value.

it is concluded that the above system is a sixth order, type-2 system, since it has two integrators
one at input side another one at motor side. Hence, this servo system is capable to provide
satisfactory steady-state and transient response to various types of commands such as step,
ramp, and parabolic inputs [4, 10]. These responses are verified practically. AZ axis maximum
velocity recorded to be 17deg/ sec approximately

References:
1. D.Zhang, R.Sun, P.Li, and Z.Zhao, “Design of Servo tracking system of microwave vehicle
antenna,” Journal of Air Force Engineering University (Natural Science Edition), vol. 4, no. 3,
pp.47–49, 2003.
2. Z. Zhang and X. Li, “Research on antenna automatic control of dynamic point-to-point
communication,” Modern Defense Technology, vol.4, article018, 2013.
3. C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory Analysis and Design, Wiley Inter science, New York, NY, USA,
3rdedition, 2005.
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_budget
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_link_establishment
6. https://www.ri.cmu.edu/pub_files/2015/5/Min_et_al-2015-JFR.pdf
7. Byung-Cheol Min*, Eric T. Matson, Jin-Woo Jung “Active Antenna Tracking System with
Directional Antennas for Enhancing Wireless Communication Capabilities of a Networked
Robotic System” Received 14 June 2014; accepted 22 February 2015.