Fast Simultaneous Characterization of all Analog Phased Array Elements

Characterization of individual elements of a phased array involves determining not only the radiation pattern of each element and the response of the gain/phase control circuitry behind the element, but the interaction of each element with all of the other elements within the array. The obvious approach is to just turn off all but one element in order to test each element one at a time, but this is extremely time consuming and often does not work due to differences in behavior between the on and off states of individual elements. It will be shown in this paper how individual element performance can be extracted from the combined pattern of the array with all elements active using orthogonal coding applied to each element of the array through the onboard gain/phase control circuitry.