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Extraction of Alpha transmitter signals from single-station observations using the direction-finding method

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Abstract

For the applications of Alpha very-low-frequency (VLF) systems consisting of multiple transmitters, determining the origin transmitter station of received signals is a crucial problem. Based on single-station observations, this study develops a direction-finding method to extract Russian Alpha transmitter signals. First, the amplitudes of Alpha signals received in Suizhou City, Hubei Province (31.57°N, 113.32°E) in the east-west (EW) and north-south (NS) directions are obtained by the power spectrum method. The amplitude ratios of signals in the two directions are subsequently adopted to estimate the propagation angles of the signals with respect to the NS direction of the VLF receiver station. Phase ambiguity in our system is eliminated by comparing Alpha signal waveform with that from the VTX transmitter in India (8.39°N, 77.75°E) as a reference station. Finally, we can determine the quadrant where the incoming wave signals are located relative to the receiver and eventually distinguish the exact Alpha transmitters. Based on the direction-finding results, the amplitudes of each Alpha signal are extracted, and their diurnal variation features are analyzed to verify the performance of our method. These results are of great significance for the further study of Alpha signals and VLF long-distance communication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Space Physics, School of Electronic Information, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    XuDong Gu, Huan Chen, ShiWei Wang, ZiLong Lu, BinBin Ni, GuangJian Li & Wen Cheng

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  1. XuDong Gu
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  2. Huan Chen
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  3. ShiWei Wang
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  4. ZiLong Lu
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  5. BinBin Ni
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  6. GuangJian Li
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  7. Wen Cheng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to XuDong Gu.

Additional information

This work was supported by the pre-research projects on Civil Aerospace Technologies (Grant Nos. D020303, D020104, and D020308), the China National Space Administration by the B-type Strategic Priority Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB41000000), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant Nos. 2042021kf1045 and 2042021kf1056), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 42188101, 42025404, 41674163, 41974186, 41704162, 41904144, and 41904143).

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Gu, X., Chen, H., Wang, S. et al. Extraction of Alpha transmitter signals from single-station observations using the direction-finding method. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 65, 1727–1737 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-021-2057-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-021-2057-2

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