Array Element Phase Pattern Consistency Measurement Without Phase Center Alignment Using Multielement Measurement Data and Element Positions

Phase response consistency is an important parameter for antenna arrays. In general, phase center alignment with the geometric center of the rotating platform is necessary for antenna phase pattern measurement. For an antenna array, it is not convenient to do this for each antenna element. Moreover, achieving accurate phase center alignment cannot be guaranteed in practice. To address this, a phase-center-alignment-free phase pattern consistency measurement method is presented. In this method, an assumption is proposed that when the wave path difference between the array element phase reference points and the rotating platform center is accurately compensated, the phase pattern difference among the elements within the main radiation area will be minimum. Based on this assumption, we designed an optimization criterion to estimate the geometric offset parameter values using synthetic array measurement data and prior element position information. Then, phase pattern consistency is calculated by correcting wave path difference for each element. Experiments with uniformly and nonuniformly spaced arrays demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.