Active phased array design for high reliability

We discuss strategies for designing: active phased array antennas with high reliability. We show how to consider fault-tolerance in the design of the antenna architecture, so that replacement of failed components can be avoided for an extended period of time. First, we address the dependence of antenna life cycle cost on component failure rates. Then we discuss the design of active phased array architecture for maximizing antenna mean-time-between-failures (MTBF). The antenna MTBF is defined in terms of a specified degradation in peak sidelobe level. We present simulated data showing the effect of random, single, and clustered element failures on the peak sidelobe level of a low sidelobe antenna aperture. We use these data as a basis for analyzing various phased array architectures in terms of their antenna MTBF.