Study on the Coupling of Identical Dipole Array Antennas Based on HFSS

Due to the easy realization of narrow beam, low sub-flap, phase-controlled scanning and beam fouling, array antennas are widely used in radar, communications and many other military and civilian fields. With the development of array antenna gradually to antenna unit miniaturization and broadband, the mutual coupling effect between array elements is more and more obvious due to the reduction of array element spacing, which makes the performance of array antenna algorithm decrease. In this paper, a method based on the coupling matrix to realize the mutual coupling calibration of antennas is investigated, and it is demonstrated that the coupling has basically no effect on the interfering signals in the beam formation. This mutual coupling calibration method is validated mainly using dipole line arrays. In both cases, a very good agreement between the mutual coupling calibration and the desired effect is observed. It is also found and demonstrated that the mutual coupling has essentially no effect on the zero-sag in the directional map, which is useful for optimizing the performance of the antenna algorithm to be more robust and reliable, avoiding unnecessary calibration and compensation.