A γ‐conical position error representation method considering high‐order position relevance of array elements

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AbstractThe position errors of array elements, which include systematic and random errors, are inevitable and could lead to the degradation of the radiation performance. For an array antenna, the systematic errors come from the continuous deformation of the reflector while the random errors come from the manufacturing and assembly of array elements. The accurate representation of position errors is important to evaluate the effects of position errors on performance in the design of an array antenna. In previous studies, many methods have been proposed to represent the systematic and random errors. However, few studies have considered the high‐order position relevance of array elements resulting from the systematic errors, which could lead to the inaccurate representation of position errors. Here, a γ‐conical representation method is proposed to consider the γ‐order position relevance of successive array elements. The existing conical representation method and the proposed γ‐conical representation method are used as comparisons to generate simulation data of position errors. The corresponding electrical performance of position errors is calculated with antenna theories and Feko. Prediction models are built based on a linear programming support vector regression algorithm to evaluate the ability of different representation methods. Finally, experiments are conducted on a platform with 8 × 8 array elements to demonstrate the superiority of the γ‐conical representation method.