Impact of antenna-polarization response on direction-of-arrival measurement

The impact of emitter polarization on the distribution of phase and amplitude across an array of receiving apertures is analytically examined. That distribution is also dependent upon direction of arrival, and that dependence is the basis in receiving systems for direction finding (DF) and for beamforming with array antennas. Dependence on polarization may tend to confound DF measurement in a certain class of DF systems and may degrade array sidelobe performance in the presence of emitters of arbitrary polarization. Polarization becomes an issue when the array elements are not sufficiently uniform in their response to incident-field polarization. The effect of polarization on DF error from a phase-comparison monopulse receiver is quantified here