A Channel Calibration and Beamforming Approach for Elemental Multi-Function Digital Phased Array

With the rapid development of phased array technology, digital phased array has become a new frontier of this field owing to its advances of multi-function, multi-beam, wide dynamic range and adaptive nulling. Different from conventional analog phased array, the phase control and beamforming in digital phased array are implemented in digital domain, which leads to the common microwave anechoic chamber test methods about channel calibration and beamforming performance evaluation unavailable for digital phased array. In this paper, a channel calibration and beamforming approach for elemental digital phased array is proposed based on characteristics analysis of digital phased array, and its performance is verified by a L-band 5× 5 elemental digital phased array system. It provides fundamental research for testing the large-scale integrated digital phased array system with multi-function beamforming.