A New Field Expansion Enabling the Compressive-Sensing-based Diagnosis of Realistic Planar Arrays through Phaseless Measurements

An innovative and effective approach to the diagnostics of faulty elements in planar array antennas is presented and assessed. The introduction and exploitation of a new field expansion allow casting the faulty elements' recovery problem as the determination of the actual aperture-field distribution. Notably, a number of remarkable features is provided, including the exploitation of just phaseless far-field measurements, the profitable use of the Compressive Sensing theory, and the capability of dealing with whatever kind of planar arrays (e.g., realistic radiating systems where mutual coupling and mounting-platform effects come into play). The given theory is supported by numerical experiments involving full-wave data relative to a realistic 100-elements waveguide array.