Patent ID: 7637656

Claim:
A method for calculating a temperature in a high temperature environment, comprising the steps of using an electromagnetic signal source to output an electromagnetic signal with a transmit frequency range of an antenna operating in the high temperature environment, the antenna characterized by a range of different center frequencies for different operating temperatures; receiving at a receiver a returned signal representing reflection characteristics of the antenna within the transmit frequency range; using a signal processing component to generate a frequency to time transformation to in-phase and quadrature waveforms extracted from the returned signal to generate resultant data representing the magnitude and phase characteristics in the time domain for reflections associated with the returned signal; generating a response curve for a reflection coefficient for the antenna by using the signal processing component to provide a time to frequency transform to a portion of the resultant data comprising a reflection associated with the center frequency of the antenna; identifying a minimum point of the response curve by use of the signal processing component to detect the center frequency for the antenna; applying via the signal processing component a calibration map to the minimum point to identify a temperature associated with the center frequency of the antenna; and providing a display presenting the temperature associated with the center frequency of the antennas the temperature of the high temperature environment.