Study on the Effects of Phased Array Channel Errors on the Beam Steering Characteristics

The effects of antenna array channel phase errors on the beam steering accuracy are investigated in this work. The beam steering errors of a square planar uniform array can be estimated using formula directly. However, this formula cannot be applied to planar arrays in other forms. And the beam errors in two orthogonal planes cannot be determined. The Monte Carlo simulations are conducted to estimate the beam steering errors of a 128-element planar array that is not square. The standard deviations of beam steering errors in two orthogonal planes are calculated and compared with the standard deviation calculated by using formula. In addition, the effects of channel amplitude errors on gain and side-lobe level (SLL) are also discussed.