Calibration of Ultra-Wideband Phased Antenna Arrays Fed with Optimized Time Delay Unit Architecture Implementations

We demonstrate that ultra-wideband (UWB) phased antenna arrays (P AA) fed with time delay architecture (TDU-A) implementations that are optimized by accounting the non-idealities of the feed network components can be calibrated for achieving desired scan performance. Specifically, a 16 element linear P AA is considered as a study case. Calibration of its optimized TDU-A implementation is shown to excite each antenna element within the quantized time delay error bound. The calibration study presented assumes an instantaneous bandwidth (IBW) of 1 GHz for the UWB P AA operating from 5 to 30 GHz. It is demonstrated that variation in side lobe level (SLL) when compared to the ideal is imperceptible below -26 dB after calibration.