This is the San Diego receiving site, with it's interferometer array of 12
antennas, each composed of 96 dipoles over a wire ground screen. With a 1700'
baseline, the interferometer can measure the angle of arrival of the incoming
radar signal to within .01 degree accuracy. The system performs un-alerted
detection of all satellites passing through the fence, not requiring any
advance information about the satellites. An "alert" channel Fast
Fourier Transform watches over the entire doppler shifted passband for signals
to appear, then steers one or more FFT data processing modules to capture
amplitude and phase. Approximately one second's worth of data is packetized and
sent to Dahlgren for further processing. The system makes on average one
satellite observation every 10 seconds.
