Tracking a radio signal

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Mike

Next idea: a receiver antenna on the plane is to be shielded by a rotating tube with a small slit in it. By using the position of the slit when we receive a transmission from the beacon we're looking for we can find out where the beacon is transmitting from.

Although the phase-based approach that Don posted is simpler to implement and somewhat more robust to multipath, this approach would work with an omnidirectional antenna and a well-designed slit (which is admittedly hard to make).

I just want to point out, though, that there is no need for a slit if you use a directional antenna. Simply rotate the antenna; the antenna's azimuth at the peak magnitude response in a revolution should correspond to roughly the right heading. Your accuracy would be limited by the "sharpness" of the antenna's response curve, however.