Abstract:

The real array manifold and the ideal array manifold may be different due to the gain and phase error, position error and mutual coupling of the array, and these errors need to be calibrated to improve the performance of the array. A passive calibration algorithm is proposed to calibrate the gain and phase error, position error and mutual coupling of the array in the automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) system. In the proposed method, ADS-B signals broadcasted by the ADS-B system are used as the pilot sources, and the pilot sources do not need to be set manually. The direction of arrival of the pilot sources can be obtained according to the position of the array antennas and the position of the aircrafts, and the errors of the array are finally calibrated by using the direction information. Compared with other algorithms, the proposed method greatly reduces the complexity of the array calibration. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.