Continental Electronics patents new eLoran transmit method, system

Photo: Continental Electronics

Texas company Continental Electronics has patented a transmitter system and method for construction of low-frequency antenna towers significantly lower in height than previously needed for identical coverage.

“One obstacle to deploying eLoran systems has been the sheer height needed for the transmission towers, each of which requires significant acreage,” said Mike Rosso, vice president of Dallas-based Continental Electronics. “Tower height and land required not only represent serious financial costs, but in some cases adequate space is simply not available. Our technology can reduce tower height and real-estate requirements. With this, reducing antenna tower height by half would reduce required land area to one quarter.”

The method uses digital adaptive correction, solid-state amplifiers, envelope modulation and a wideband matching network. Any linear distortions within usable bandwidth are removed by digital adaptive correction, according to the company. Envelope modulation is required to achieve linearization for any signal type including Loran. A wideband matching network tunes out capacitive reactance from electrically short antennas, transforms impedance to a value suitable for the transmitter, increases usable bandwidth and suppresses harmonics and out-of-band emissions.

“We hope this will aid moving forward eLoran deployments around the world,” Rosso added. “Widely used satellite-based navigation and timing services are vulnerable to jamming, spoofing and other forms of interference. The world needs a more resilient solution as afforded by ground-based solutions such as eLoran.”