Patent 7239264 was granted and assigned to The University of Birmingham on July, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Transponders, receivers and position determining systems are described. In one embodiment, a transponder includes (i) an on-board receiver and associated receiving antenna for receiving incoming radar pulses in a first frequency band at an unknown pulse repetition rate, (ii) means for calculating the pulse repetition rate, (iii) a frequency synthesizer for generating a signal in a second frequency band, (iv) modulation means for modulating the signal generated by the frequency synthesizer so as to encode information into the signal, and (v) a transmitter and associated transmitting antenna for transmitting said modulated signal, wherein the transmitted signal is synchronized with the calculated pulse repetition rate of the incoming radar pulses, and modulation of the transmitted signal is such that accurate positioning of the transponder can be determined at a remote receiver.