Beamsteering technique to minimize sidelobes due to phase quantization in a phased array antenna

• Main Authors: Little Matthew P, Rowland Landon L, McKay Douglas M
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 20.03.2018
• Subjects: ANTENNAS, i.e. RADIO AERIALS; BASIC ELECTRIC ELEMENTS; ELECTRICITY

The Active Electronically Scanned Lens Array design for a phased array reduces the cost of the phased array with minimal sacrifice to array performance. The design replaces transmit/receive (T/R) modules at the front end of the array with low cost and low lost phase shifters. A tradeoff in this design is a periodic phase quantization error that leads to quantization lobes. To reduce quantization lobes, a phase addition approach is presented to break up with the periodicity. In the presented approach, a phase offset is added at a T/R module and then corrected for at each radiating element in the array. The applied phase offset can be either deterministic or random.