re can radio freq be used to measure distance in article c v m c bcstec ca boeing com rgc bcstec ca boeing com robert g carpenter writes i m wondering if it s possible to use radio waves to measure the distance between a transmitter s and receiver seems to me that you should be able to measure the signal strength and determine distance this would be for short distances ft and i would need to have accuracy of inches or so this would be susceptible to fading multi path etc we used to use a system at the shop made by tellurometer in south africa it used a ghz signal between units across the distance to be measured the ghz was just the carrier the real signals were several switched ones around mhz or so whose relative phases at the receiver would read out the digits of the distance down to cm if needed the units came with psychrometers sp to measure the relative humidity and instructions for correction of the measurements due to rh and temp they were rather heavy and required an operator at each end current technology uses polarized reflectors dual polaization tx rx and psuedo random coding of a radar pulse about the same resolution at x band much better at ghz only one end is heavy regards stu beal ve mwm u csx cciw ca national water research institute burlington ontario canada we d made it through yet another nuclear winter and the lawn had just trapped and eaten it s first robin kyle j spiller
