Design and Simulation of a LORAN Signal Generator for LPS Transmitter Using Class I Amplifier

Long-Range-Navigation (LORAN) transmitter is an essential part of a local positioning system (LPS) that provides high power and high precision pulses with a specific waveform. In this paper, a new method for design and implementation of the LPS transmitter, based on class I amplifiers, has been proposed. Each block of the transmitter includes MOSFET amplifier modules driven by pulse width modulation (PWM). The pulse width at each cycle has been calculated by an algorithm based on the least square method (LSM). Simulation results show that the obtained maximum zero crossing error in the 4th to 12th half-cycles is 18 ns, the generated pulse width is 4.9 kHz and the MMSE of the pulse, which is directly proportional to the ECD, is equal to 0.009, demonstrating  that with the proposed method it is possible to produce an accurate LORAN pulse with all the required parameters. High efficiency of class I amplifiers, makes this method a good candidate for light-weighted, highly accurate and flexible tactical LPS transmitters.