A simple on-board calibration method and its accuracy for mechanical distortions of satellite phased array antennas

In satellite phased array antennas, some mechanical distortions, which may be due to launching vibrations or thermal variations in orbit, will cause significant degradations of the electrical performances. In this paper, a simple calibration method is proposed for such mechanical distortions, which can be attained by an on-board measurement system. The method is validated by experiments and its accuracies are also evaluated. The proposed method can attain the theoretically-predicted calibration accuracy.