A Self-Adaptive Phased Array Conformed on a Highly Flexible Aperture

In practical applications, a highly flexible conformal phased array will experience inevitable deformations during severe weather conditions. This will distort radiating beams, especially beam directions. To overcome this technical challenge, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a self-adaptive phased array printed on a highly flexible, strongly deformable aperture. The unique novelty of this study is the use of a single six-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU) for each array element to measure the element positions in real time during deformations, and the derivation of a dedicated algorithm integrating accelerations, angular velocities, and phases of elements to compensate for the deterioration of radiating patterns due to deformations. Microwave vector multipliers (VMs) are further used to control the phases continuously. Finally, an experimental prototype operating in S-band is implemented, validating the effectiveness of the proposed approach.