Abstract
Active phased array antennas (APAAs) can suffer from the effects of harsh thermal environments, which are caused by the large quantity of power generated by densely packed T/R modules and external thermal impacts. The situation may be worse in the case of limited room and severe thermal loads, due to heat radiation and a low temperature sink. The temperature field of the antenna can be changed. Since large numbers of temperature-sensitive electronic components exist in T/R modules, excitation current output can be significantly affected and the electromagnetic performance of APAAs can be seriously degraded. However, due to a lack of quantitative analysis, it is difficult to directly estimate the effect of temperature on the electromagnetic performance of APAAs. Therefore, this study investigated the electromagnetic performance of APAAs as affected by two key factors—the uniformly distributed temperature field and the temperature gradient field—based on different antenna shapes and sizes, to provide theoretical guidance for their thermal design.
Highlights
Active phased array antennas (APAAs) are widely applied in radar systems for airplane-based warning, satellite-based imaging, ship-based fire control, and ground-based air defense [1,2,3]
In terms of the temperature gradient field, the distribution of the amplitude and phase error are closely related to the distributions of the temperature fields
(4) The excitation current error corresponds to the type of T/R module used and the above analysis can provide thermal design guidance for this kind of module in regard to the electromagnetic performance of APAAs
Summary
Active phased array antennas (APAAs) are widely applied in radar systems for airplane-based warning, satellite-based imaging, ship-based fire control, and ground-based air defense [1,2,3]. Research has focused on thermal design of array antennas based only on temperature field analysis [9,10,11]. A boosted-beam control panel with active component calibration for temperature variation has been applied [17] Both of the above studies were focused on temperature indicators. Because the main thermal loads include the high power from T/R modules and external thermal conditions for ground-, ship-, airplane-, and satellite-based antennas, the effects of two typical key factors—the uniformly distributed temperature field and temperature gradient field—based on different shapes and sizes of array antennas are discussed, to provide theoretical guidance for the thermal design of APAAs
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