Patent ID: 7808429

Claim:
A method for steering a beam from a phased array antenna mounted on a mobile platform, comprising the steps of: measuring an inertial angular rate of a plurality of portions of the phased array antenna at a first data rate with a plurality of antenna angular rate sensors, each of the plurality of angular rate sensors rigidly mounted to an associated one of the plurality of portions of the phased array antenna to measure the angular rate of the associated portion of the phased array antenna; generating an estimate of an inertial angular attitude of the mobile platform at a second data rate lower than the first data rate using one or more mobile platform angular rate sensors mounted in the mobile platform and remote from the phased array antenna; generating a predictive estimate of the inertial angular attitude of each portion of the phased array antenna using the measured inertial angular rate of each portion of the phased array antenna and the estimate of the inertial angular attitude of the mobile platform; and steering the beam using the predictive estimate of the inertial angular rate of each portion of the phased array antenna.