Poynting-vector filter
View Patent ↗A determination is made of frequency components associated with a particular bearing or location resulting from sources emitting electromagnetic-wave energy for which a Poynting-Vector can be defined. The broadband frequency components associated with a specific direction or location of interest are isolated from other components in the power spectrum that are not associated with the direction or location of interest. The collection of pointing vectors can be used to characterize the source.
1. A method for reconstructing a signal of interest, comprising:
producing a collection of Poynting vectors by:
collecting magnetic-field data along three orthogonal axes, wherein said magnetic-field data is collected with a tri-axial B-field sensor;
collecting electric-field data along three orthogonal axes, wherein said electric-field data is collected with a tri-axial E-field sensor;
digitizing said magnetic-field data and said electrical-field data to produce digitized data;
producing calculated E-field components and B-field components from said digitized data; and
calculating said collection of Poynting vectors from said calculated E-field components and B-field components;
the method further comprising:
identifying, from said collection of Poynting vectors, spectral peaks having a common Poynting vector, to produce a set of commonly oriented Poynting vectors; and
reconstructing a signal of interest from said set of commonly oriented Poynting vectors.
2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
selecting spectral peaks within said magnetic-field data and within said electric-field data;
filtering said spectral peaks to produce said digitized data, wherein said digitized data is represented in the form of six digital wave trains, one for each axis of collected data; and
sampling each said wave train of said six digital wave trains at identical time periods to produce said E-field components and said B-field components.
3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the step of selecting spectral peaks includes performing power spectrum analyses on precisely contemporaneous segments of said magnetic-field data and said electric-field data.
4. The method of claim 3 , further comprising generating a set or list of those values of the frequency of said power spectrum analyses at which spectral peaks appear above background noise in all six channels.
5. The method of claim 3 , further comprising binning each power spectrum of said power spectrum analyses.
6. The method of claim 2 , wherein the step of filtering said spectral peaks comprises applying a filtering method to said spectral peaks.
7. The method of claim 6 , wherein said filtering method is selected from the group consisting of a Butterworth filtering method and a Chebyshev filtering method.
8. The method of claim 2 , further comprising binning said spectral peaks.
9. The method of claim 8 , wherein said digitized data comprises a series of continuous narrow frequency bins, wherein said calculated E-field components and B-field components are produced using signal amplitude information from each frequency bin of said series of continuous narrow frequency bins.
10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising calculating Fast Fourier Transforms from said magnetic-field data and said electric-field data.
11. The method of claim 1 , further comprising averaging in time a value of each Poynting vector of said collection of Poynting vectors.
12. The method of claim 1 , wherein said digitized data comprises a series of continuous narrow frequency bins, wherein said calculated E-field components and B-field components are produced using signal amplitude information from each frequency bin of said series of continuous narrow frequency bins.
13. The method of claim 1 , wherein said orientation is within a selected range.