An Efficient Bias Correction Method for Large Planar Polarimetric Phased Array Radar

Abstract

For a large planar polarimetric phased array radar, a bias correction matrix obtained from array pattern measurements needs to be applied when the beam is pointed off broadside. To avoid measuring all possible beam directions while ensuring the correction accuracy, an efficient bias correction method using polynomial surface fitting is proposed. After dividing the entire scan area into several subregions, merely dozens of beam directions are measured in each subregion. Through the polynomial surface model, the correction matrices of unmeasured beam directions can be well predicted. The simulated results show that the proposed method can effectively achieve accurate bias correction in two-dimension <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm 45^{\circ }$</tex-math></inline-formula> scanning. Under the same relative error level for antenna pattern measurement, the results of Monte Carlo simulations verify that the proposed method has a more stable performance than directly beam-by-beam measurement due to its least square process.