Panel Misalignment Effects on the Radiation Pattern from a Solid Surface Deployable Antenna

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of antenna performance degradation due to the panel misalignment in a solid surface deployable antenna. The misalignment of the panel causes a phase error at the aperture plane due to path length differences. The radiated field is rapidly calculated using the aperture phase error method with analytic integrations in the case of uniform panel misalignment and quarter-zone uniform misalignment. The effects of the panel misalignment on the co-polarization characteristics of gain and side-lobe level (SLL) are calculated. Beam tilting is observed when the panel misalignment occurs uniformly in the half-zone of the whole panel area.

Keywords

• aperture phase error method
• panel misalignment error
• solid surface deployable antenna