Spaceborne Phased Array Antenna Beam Correction

Calibration is an important part in Phased Array Antenna (PAA). Differing fromthe calibration of PAA on the ground, the difficulty of remote calibration of PAA forsatellite, such as satellite burden restriction, calibration complexity and in orbitcalibrating, make it a problem need to be pay more attention in the appliciation of PAA.This paper expatiate several main calibration methods to calibrate Phased ArrayAntenna of satellite, such as the UTE/CCE algorithm and the REV method. Thefeasibility analysis of their application is made as well as the problem existing in them.A new calibration method of Phased Array Antenna in satellite is proposed bycombining the advantages of those methods. The array is divided into several groupswith one microwave switch added in respectively. Based on the CCE algorithm, thegroup under test is encoded by Hadamard matrix. Then using the law arccosine, thecombined electric-field vector of the group under test is obtained. Finally, the complexgain of each element in different state is figured out by decoding the matrix ofcombined electric-field vector with the invert of Hadamard matrix. The simulationresults indicate that more precise calibration result is available by this method withfewer additional components installed in the satellite and less calibration complexity,compared with other calibration methods. The phase shift controlling circuit is made interms of the requirement of the new calibration method.The Ka band receiver used in the calibration experiment is designed as another partof this paper, including the Ka band waveguide-to-microstrip transition, the Ka bandmixer, the 9.4GHz phased locked oscillator (PLO) and the Ka band tripler. The outputpower of the 9.4GHz PLO is above +14dBm, and the phase noise of the PLL is-94.8dBc/Hz@10kHz. The receiver has also been tested. When the RF input power is-5dBm at 30GHz, the IF output power at 1.8GHz is-23dBm.