A built-in performance monitoring/fault isolation and correction (PM/FIC) system for active phased array antennas

A performance monitoring/fault isolation and correction (PM/FIC) system for a smart skins phased array antenna with active transmit/receive modules has been developed and tested. This system employs a built-in transmission line signal injector embedded at the radiating aperture together with a phase toggling technique for signal detection. The authors present the design of a demonstration test array and the PM/FIC system test results. The PM/FIC system can be used to provide the performance monitoring of the array. A low-sidelobe distribution can be also achieved using the PM/FIC system. In the application to self-correction, a fault correction algorithm has been developed and incorporated into the demonstration model.<>