Enhancing the Aperture Usage Efficiency of Single Reflector Compact Antenna Test Range Using 10 × 10 Antenna Array

Aperture usage efficiency is an important parameter for designing a compact antenna test range (CATR). The edge treatment of single reflector edge can reduce the effect of edge diffraction, but the aperture utilization only increases to 50%. The method that beamforming the radiation pattern of the feed is used in this paper. That will change the distribution in the aperture of the reflector surface to improve the aperture utilization. A 10×10 uniform rectangular antenna array is designed as feed and each element has different excitation. Adjusting the element excitation of antenna array can realize beamforming which can achieve high aperture usage. The method to realize beamforming is the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. The simulation is verified in a single parabolic reflector CATR with a diameter of 1 m and focal length of 1.633 m. Without the edge treatment, the aperture utilization can reach 80%, under the amplitude ripple standard of 2 dB. Above all, the works of this paper provides theoretical guidance for designing antenna array as a feed in the single parabolic reflector CATR with high aperture usage efficiency.