Simple Calibration Technique for Phased Array Radar Systems

Abstract

Abstract-This paper presents a novel effective calibration technique applicable to phased array radars. The real embedded patterns of the array elements are measured independently in operating mode, taking antenna coupling and other parasitic effects into account. The proposed calibration technique requires minimal modification of the radar hardware. A set of angular-dependent error coefficients, which are compensated during the calibration process, are extracted for one received pulse for one/each angular direction of interest. The performance and effectiveness of the here-proposed calibration technique are assessed by means of modeling and experimental verification.

Phased Array Calibration by Binary Compressed Sensing

“…The time delay δt is inversely proportional to the sounding signal bandwidth ΔF , that is δt = 1/ΔF , or its multiples. The controlled time delays are identical and do not depend on the number of radar channels contrary to the calibration technique in [14], which makes use of an element-wise off-setting in the receiving channels. In the case of large phased arrays with reduced operating bandwidth, the relative time offsets would result in too long time delays along the radar channels, that is impractical from an application standpoint.…”

A Fast Calibration Method for Phased Arrays by Using the Graph Coloring Theory

“…When these amplitude and phase errors are small and cannot be satisfied by the manufacturing process, the phased array antennas must be calibrated, especially for a digital beam-forming phased array with very sharp beams. Many calibration techniques have been proposed to obtain uniform amplitude and phase values for each antenna [3,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. These methods can be divided into five types: Near-field calibration, auxiliary probe calibration, internal calibration, far-field calibration, and mutual coupling calibration.…”

“…Sometimes the far-field transmitter/receiver is difficult to deploy. This method may not be optimum for airborne radars and ship-borne radars [2,13]. Mutual coupling calibration method uses the mutual coupling effect among antennas to measure the amplitude and phase differences by transmitting from one antenna and receiving from another.…”

Direction-of-Arrival Estimation for Circulating Space-Time Coding Arrays: From Beamspace MUSIC to Spatial Smoothing in the Transform Domain

“…Particularly, the concept of circulating space-time coding was proposed in [ 1 ]. As a special type of coherent colocated MIMO radar [ 16 ], CSTCA is simple to be implemented in engineering [ 17 , 18 ]. In [ 17 ], a low-cost digital beamforming technique was introduced according to circulating signal principle.…”

“…In [ 17 ], a low-cost digital beamforming technique was introduced according to circulating signal principle. In [ 18 ], the element embedded pattern error and antenna coupling were directly calibrated in operating mode by exploiting circulating space-time coding. In [ 19 ], an extended circulating space-time code with constant modulus was suggested for transmit beampattern synthesis.…”