Efficient fault diagnosis in an antenna array incorporating mutual coupling

The inverse problem for locating faulty elements in an antenna array from electromagnetic field measurements is an interesting and relevant research topic. We present a novel idea based on compressive sensing to detect the faulty elements from fixed probe measurements, which is based on the optimizing of the element excitations. Unlike many previous works, our approach considers the inter-element mutual coupling effects and identifies their importance in fault diagnosis. This study illustrates the effects of coupling in a loop antenna array with varying array sizes. We used two coupling models, namely, the average embedded pattern and the coupling matrix approach to include coupling effects in the analysis. Our work significantly improves antenna array fault diagnosis using the coupling-aware method compared to the existing methods.