Co-Simulation Methodology for the Study of Active Electronically Scanned Arrays (AESA)

This paper presents an efficient simulation methodology for large active antennas derived from commercial softwares. Due to important challenges in optimizing the SWaP-C (Size, Weight, Power and Cost) for the new Radar generation, it is especially necessary to consider the nonlinearities of amplifiers and the impact of variations of the active reflection coefficients of the antenna. In this contribution, the proposed methodology allows for the calculation of voltages and currents in each active chain and the total radiated field. The chosen example to demonstrate the interest of this approach is an active antenna composed of 228 high power amplifiers (HPA) connected to a multilayer PCB with microstrip patches and a parasitic superstrate to improve scanning performances. This study helps to define the most suited architecture to improve the SWaP-C of Radar application.