Planar near-field diagnostic testing of slotted waveguide array antennas

Many radar systems for military aircraft use resonant broadwall slotted waveguide array antennas. In such demanding applications, the sidelobe performance (especially at wide angles) is very important. Despite the extremely high accuracy of modern design and analysis methods for this type of antenna, design corrections are still normally required to achieve the best possible performance. Some information on some of the design, analysis and correction procedures is given by Tanner and Lyon (1990). The goal of the measurements is to generate slot excitations in precisely the form required for comparison with the analysis model, and to determine design corrections