Statistical evaluation of ESPAR antennas and adaptive beamforming performance prediction using extracted parameters of an ESPAR antenna

Dozens of electrically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antennas were measured in a conventional far-field measurement system. The measured directivity results were evaluated statistically. The results show that the ESPAR antennas are useful in many applications. A technique to predict the adaptive beamforming behavior of a 7-element ESPAR antenna is presented. Instead of using simulated reactances, practical reactances which were extracted from an ESPAR antenna are used in the simulation of the adaptive beamforming algorithm to make the antenna steer its main lobe to any desired direction and place null in the direction of an interference signal. The predicted beams and nulls show good agreements with those of experiments.