Design Of Passive Phased Array Feed Network System

Phased array antenna developed rapidly in recent years due to its superior electricalscanning features, it is a big advantage which overcomes the common radar mechanicalscanning speeds restrictions. A good phased array antenna has good radiating elements, andhas a matching feed network is crucial, too. In order to achieve precise control of thephased array antenna’s beam, there’s a higher demand for the feed network. This articleproposes a complete solution for the design of the feed network, which can basically do thephased array antenna testing. It includes the RF hardware circuit design, control circuitdesign, the back end algorithm to the front end control interface. Making the entire systemcan test the phased array antenna performance and do some evaluation easily, flexibly,efficiently.This article first made a brief introduction of the phased array antenna’s and the feednetwork’s development history, and also discussed the advantages and significance of thesystem. Then the core components of a passive feed network--digital phase shifter anddigital attenuator’s principle are introduced in detail.Then, the paper is divided into two sections to describe the design of the system：The first part is the hardware circuit section, including the RF circuit in passive feedingunit and its control circuit. First, depending on requirements to select specific embodimentsof the system design as well as the hardware circuit, then completing the design of thecircuit layout and the controller internal software algorithms based on the selected program,finally do some test for the circuit and analyze the test results.The second part is the software part. First analyzing how the quantization erroraffecting array antenna, then introducing a quantitative optimization methods and passivefeed network phase error compensation algorithm. Finally, the PC-side control softwarecontrol logic and how the genetic algorithms link to control software is introduced.Finally, a simple summary of the system designed in this paper is made, propose theadvantages and disadvantages of this system and provide corrected solution. This paper alsogives some conclusions at the present stage and directions for future research.