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Yes, if you can coordinate and hold their position to ~1/10th of the wavelength (gets challenging above a few GHz), and synchronize their transmitters/receivers with ps accuracy (feasible if there's no GPS interference). And somehow you're exchanging the raw signal components amongst all the platforms.

The parabolic distribution is not at all needed in this case, you would just adjust the phase at each unit based on the distribution you have.

It is a thing that's considered, mostly for very low frequencies (1-100MHz) where all the above challenges are vastly simplified, and also large antennas (potentially km) are needed for any kind of directionality.






No need to hold their position that accurately, just need to know, ideally in real-time.

At 6Ghz, 5cm wavelength, 1/10 would be 5mm. I think that might be a bit under regular RTK accuracy.

But at lower frequencies, maybe. Or you can do several passes with the same drone and process later :D


If the drones use e.g. laser rangefinders to measure the distance to 2-3 known reflectors, and maybe to each other, with sub-mm accuracy, that may be enough.

Deploying an antenna that's effectively 50 or 100 m wide by lifting 10-20 drones, after some simple ground preparations, could be invaluable in many scenarios, especially for the military, of course.


The same technique as he uses here for synchronizing the receivers would work. Common reception and triangulation of a strong local beacon would enable positioning at much better than GNSS precision, both because of the SNR advantage itself and because you'd have more options for dealing with carrier phase ambiguity.

Does UWB provide enough accuracy to be useful or would you need something else?



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