ARLA/CLUSTER: A análise real do desempenho do sistema de antena recorrendo ao WSPRlite

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Breakthrough in antenna system performance analysis

Frank Donovan W3LPL has one of the few 'super-stations' in the world.
While using two WSPRlite antenna testers from SOTABEAMS to compare
antenna arrays he noticed that excellent results could be obtained if
he filtered the reception data so that he only used truly simultaneous
reception reports. Since WSPR transmitters transmit at random time
intervals, such simultaneous reports would be relatively rare – unless
you are using a 'super-station'!

SOTABEAMS analysed Frank’s data and agreed that it was an interesting
discovery. Thus they worked to incorporate this into their antenna
analysis system. The first stage was to upgrade their DXplorer.net
data analysis system to allow filtering by simultaneous spots and also
by range/wave angle. In addition to this enhancement, real-time
statistical analysis was incorporated.

Not everyone has a “super-station” so a hardware upgrade was done to
the WSPRlite transmitters to allow pairs of transmitters to work
synchronously (transmitting at the same time) but also pseudo-randomly
so as to correctly share the WSPR frequency slots. This enhancement
greatly increases the amount of data and makes simultaneous analysis
of even small low-efficiency antennas possible.

Together these changes make real-time performance analysis of antenna
systems available in a way that has never before been possible. This
exciting new analysis method is now live. Frank will be talking on
this system at the Contest University at Dayton 2017.

Details of the system are at www.sotabeams.co.uk/wsprlite