Verification of the mutual coupling compensation technique in small planar antenna arrays

In this paper the quality of a technique to compensate for mutual coupling (and other phenomena) in small linear antenna arrays is investigated. This technique consists in calculation of a coupling matrix, which is than used to determine corrected antenna array excitation coefficients. Although this technique is known for more than 20 years, there is still very little information about how different phenomena existing in real antenna arrays influence their performance. In this paper the effect of mutual coupling is separated from other undesired effects, e.g. aperture edge diffraction, and its influence on coupling compensation is determined. It is shown that mutual coupling itself can be compensated very well and an ultralow sidelobe level could be achieved in practice.