Position Error Detection and Compensation for Far-Field Radar Cross-Section Measurement

The calibration process is an essential kernel step in far-field radar cross-section measurement. Nevertheless, in the turntable test scenario, the calibrator cannot always be placed at the rotation center of the turntable. Because the geometric center and the rotation center of the upper surface of the turntable are not always coincident. To address this issue, we propose an error estimation method to predict and correct the calibrator position error caused by this issue; an error estimation method is proposed based on the vector rotation theory. Initially, the scattered power of the calibrator is recorded in the monostatic test mode. Then, the collected data are normalized and median filtered. Next, the position error vector is evaluated by determining the values of the radius and the polar angle of the calibrator in the experimental coordinate system. Simulation and experimental results show that the predicting accuracy with the proposed method is higher than 86%, which confirms the efficiency of this method.