Study on Frequency Characteristic for Self-Calibration Method of Systematic Errors for DBF Antenna Using Gating Process

National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) is currently researching and developing an array-fed reflector antenna that flexibly changes the coverage area using a DBF and improves the frequency utilization efficiency using a DC for next-generation communication satellites in the Ka-band. The systematic error calibration of an array feed is very important because the influence of phase errors appears prominently in the characteristics of the antennas. We propose a self-calibration system for an array feed using a pickup antenna and gating process to realize a more accurate systematic error calibration for array-fed reflector antennas. The calibration values for the array feed are obtained from the coupling characteristics using a pickup antenna from which the noise is removed by a gating process. This report shows that the proposed method does not affect the radiation pattern calibration even if the calibration coefficient is calculated from the coupling characteristic of an arbitrary frequency in the operation band.