Novel Reception and Transmission Calibration Technique for Active Antenna Array Based on Phase Center Estimation

This paper presents an on-site calibration technique and significant results obtained from the compensation of errors and mutual coupling. The proposed algorithm deals with the problem of calibration of active antenna arrays at reception and transmission, proposing an on-site calibration technique. The proposed on-site calibration technique starts with the application of an off-line calibration algorithm of which two different techniques are proposed. These techniques are based on the direct estimation of the phase center from the active element pattern measured, and the phase center estimation based on the active element pattern suggested. The expansion of equations of the proposed off-line calibration algorithms is also presented. These algorithms deal with the compensation of mutual coupling effect and together with gain, phase, and location errors.