A study of tracking accuracy in monopulse phased arrays

The requirements for high-data rates in modem weapons systems favor the use of phased arrays for monopulse tracking antennas. A discussion is presented of the tracking errors produced by the phase and amplitude errors in the excitation function of a phased array. Both systematic and random phase errors are considered. The effects of both scan and aperture correlation of the random errors is discussed. Even when off-boresight tracking is performed, boresight errors were found to be the predominant tracking error.