Patent ID: 8116709

Claim:
A microwave receiver configured to measure a frequency F of a microwave signal received by the receiver, in a band of frequencies having a maximum frequency Fmax, the receiver comprising: N frequency meters E 1 , E 2 , . . . Ek, . . . EN, each meter forming at least a portion of N pathways respectively to provide respectively N ambiguous frequency measurements Fm 1 , Fm 2 , . . . Fmk, . . . FmN of the microwave signal received, the microwave signal received being sampled, in each frequency meter, at a respective sampling frequency Fe 1 , Fe 2 , . . . Fek, . . . FeN, each frequency meter comprising: a one-bit analog/digital converter fed directly with the microwave signal received by the receiver, each converter providing a real digital signal at a sampling frequency Fek; a DFT processor to perform a discrete Fourier transform based on the real digital signal output by the one-bit converter; and at least one peak detector of a spectral line maximum of the discrete Fourier transform provided by the DFT processor; and the receiver further comprising, an ambiguity resolving device receiving the N frequency measurements and providing the frequency F of the microwave signal received, wherein the N frequency meters provide Nptk sampling points to the DFT processor, wherein the DFT processor further comprises: a first output to provide a result of a first discrete Fourier transform DFTi- 1 of the Nptk sampling points during a first sampling time period; and a second output to provide a result of a second discrete Fourier transform DFTi of the Nptk sampling points during a second sampling time period, wherein the second sampling time period temporally overlaps the first sampling time period by approximately 50%.