Planar Near-Field Measurement of Digital Phased Arrays Using Near-Field Scan Plane Reconstruction

A phased array with a transmit/receive (T/R) digital beamforming (DBF) network was designed and fabricated by CEA Technologies Pty Ltd., Canberra, Australia, under the joint Australia/USA AUSPAR Program. The array was characterized through a series of antenna measurements that utilized a compact range and planar near-field scanning facility at the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory. The near-field measurements acquired element-level near-field responses that were received by the array of digital receivers present at each element in the array. This paper discusses a processing technique-referred to as near-field scan plane reconstruction-to generate any desired beam from the element-level data. The results are compared to compact range measurements of beams formed using real-time processing showing good agreement.