Mutual Coupling Auto-Calibration of Conformal Array Antenna with Instrumental Sensors Method

ISM (instrumental sensors method) is proposed in this paper for mutual coupling calibration of conformal array antennas. With the help of some instrumental sensors and some time-disjoint pilot sources in unknown directions, ISM is able to achieve a favorable mutual coupling calibration just using a one-dimensional search, with no high-dimensional nonlinear search and convergence burden involved. Monte-Carlo simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and behavior of the proposed ISM for mutual coupling calibration of conformal array. The method proposed can easily be extends to the calibration of other array errors, as long as the instrumental sensors can introduce some favorable apriori constraints to the array manifold.