Closed-loop beam forming experiment for an onboard phased array fed reflector antenna

This paper describes the beamforming procedure for phased array fed reflector antennas and gives the results of a beamforming experiment for a receiving phased array fed reflector antenna. In the experiment, the main beams are aimed at two target directions. The results indicate that the procedure adequately compensates for the mechanical errors of the reflector, alignment errors of the antenna system, and phase and amplitude errors of the BFN. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed beamforming procedure and algorithm.