STK 3D Electronically Steerable Phased Array Antenna Plugin
STK 3D Electronically Steerable Phased Array Antenna Plugin. Trey Spetch, Jerry Odhner, and Kristen Jones. What is a 3D Steerable Phased Array Antenna?. Flat Panel Array of Elements Beam Electronically Steered by Varying Phase Across Elements Steerable in Both Azimuth and Elevation.
STK 3D Electronically Steerable Phased Array Antenna Plugin
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Presentation Transcript
STK 3D Electronically Steerable Phased Array Antenna Plugin Trey Spetch, Jerry Odhner, and Kristen Jones
What is a 3D Steerable Phased Array Antenna? • Flat Panel Array of Elements • Beam Electronically Steered by Varying Phase Across Elements • Steerable in Both Azimuth and Elevation
Applications of Electronically Steerable Flat Panel Arrays • Over the Horizon Radar • Missile Searching and Tracking (Patriot Missile) • Ship-Borne Radar • Aircraft Antennas • Must be conformal with aircraft • No dishes allowed • Large apertures achievable
STK Static Antenna Patterns Not Suitable to Model Phased Array Beam 90 Degree Elevation Beams 45 Degree Elevation Beams 1 GHz, 1m Aperture 1 GHz, 1m Aperture Array Antenna Dish Antenna Array Antenna Dish Antenna
Antenna Notional Model m = 4 Crossed-Dipole Element n = 3 l/2
Dihedral Angles to Boresight and ToObject • Dihedral Angles for Boresight (f, q) and ToObject (a, b)
Plugin Model Coord Xform ToObjectAz b ToObjectEl a G(m, n, l, q, f, a, b) m, n, l GainToObject BoresightHoriz q BoresightVert f
Creating and Attaching Plugin Scripts There are several kinds of plugins (constraints, transmitter and receiver models, custom antenna gain, etc) For a custom antenna gain plugin, select the plugin file on the receiver properties panel under Antenna… Details… Languages: Matlab, Perl, and VBScript. The examples scripts that AGI provides are a good place to start. You can then add any additional input variables as needed and write functions to do custom calculations.
Plugin Code • AntennaGainPlugin.vbs.doc
Effect of Changing Array Dimensions Increasing the number of elements along one axis of the antenna decreases the beamwidth in that direction 5 x 5 Array, 1 GHz 5 x 10 Array, 1 GHz 10 x 10 Array, 1 GHz
Effects of Wavelength For a given panel aperture size, the beamwidth decreases with wavelength 1 meter array (2x2), 500 MHz 1 meter array (7x7), 1 GHz 1 meter array (33x33), 5 GHz
Conclusion • STK Plugins allow dynamic beam shaping for antennas based on custom equations • Any geometric variable or scalar value can be input to the plugin • Allows extremely accurate modeling of link margins for phased arrays and other custom antennas