Investigation into phase quantization effects of synthesized array factor having a main beam and a scanning prescribed null using a linear array

Investigations into the phase quantization effects for a 16-element linear array with half-wavelength element spacing and digital phase shifters are reported in this article for an array factor having a main beam and a prescribed null. The main beam is fixed, and the prescribed null angular position varies between 1 and 60deg. Based on results with perfect phase, the effects of phase quantization on the radiation characteristics are studied for several main beam positions. Particularly, one can notice that the main beam angular position and half-power beamwidth errors are similar to the results with exact phase. However, phase quantization greatly affects the prescribed null position and depth.