Frequency hopping signal interceptor

Claim 1

A frequency hopping interceptor system for intercepting a frequency hopping signal which includes determining the frequency hopping parameters of bandwidth, hop number, dwell time, hop rate, minimum channel spacing, and a set of hop frequencies containing at least a minimum and a maximum frequencies comprising: a compressive receiver means having a passband that includes the bandwidth for sampling a received signal at a scan rate that is greater than the hop rate and for separating said received signal into its frequency components over a plurality of scan periods; a memory means connected to said compressive receiver means for storing the number occurrences of each of said frequency components and its scan period; and a data processor means connected to said memory means for determining the hop frequencies, the number of frequencies from the total number of different frequency components, the bandwidth from the difference between the maximum frequency and the minimum frequency, the hop rate from the ratio of the number of frequencies to the minimum time required to receive two successive ones of the same frequence component, dwell time from the minimum time between successively occurring frequency components, the channel spacing from the minimum difference between adjacent frequency components, and the hop number from the time of occurrence of a frequency component.

Claim 7

A method of intercepting a frequency hopping signal including determining the frequency hopping parameters of bandwidth, hop number, dwell time, hop rate, minimum channel spacing, and a set of hop frequencies containing at least a minimum and a maximum frequencies comprising: sampling said frequency hopping signal at a scan rate that is greater than the hop rate to obtain a sampled signal over a plurality of scan periods; separating said sampled signal into its frequency components over said scan periods; storing the number of occurrences of each of said frequency components and its scan period; and determining the hop frequencies, the number of frequencies from the total number of different frequency components, the bandwidth from the difference between the maximum frequency and the minimum frequency, the hop rate from the ratio of the number of frequencies to the minimum time required to receive two successive ones of the same frequency component, dwell time from the minimum time between successively occurring frequency components, the channel spacing from the minimum difference between adjacent components, and the hop number from the time of occurrence of a frequency component.

Claim 8

A method of intercepting a frequency hopping signal including determining the frequency hopping parameters of bandwidth, hop number, dwell time, hop rate, minimum channel spacing, and a set of hop frequencies containing at least a minimum and a maximum frequencies comprising: sampling said frequency hopping signal at a scan rate that is greater than the hop rate to obtain a sampled signal over a plurality of scan periods; separating said sampled signal into its frequency components over said scan periods; storing the number of occurrences of each of said frequency components and its scan period; and determining the hop frequencies, the number of frequencies from the total number of different frequency components, the bandwidth from the difference between the maximum frequency and the minimum frequency, the hop rate from the ratio of the number of frequencies to the minimum time required to receive two successive ones of the same frequency component, dwell time from the minimum time between successively occurring frequency components, the channel spacing from the minimum difference between adjacent components, and the hop number from the time of occurrence of a frequency component.