METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR USING A RECEIVE PLANAR PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA ON A COMMUNICATION PLATFORM TO ESTIMATE A POINTING ERROR OF THE ANTENNA AND TO ORIENT ITS BORESIGHT TOWARDS THE TRANSMITTER.

摘要

A system and method for orienting a communications antenna are disclosed. The method includes: segmenting a receive phase array antenna into N sub-arrays with M-antenna elements in each sub-array; receiving, a known signal, by each of the M-antenna elements of at least four (4) of the N-sub-arrays; scanning in a direction of the known signal by applying a beam weight associated with each of the M elements in each of the at least 4-sub-arrays to obtain M-weighted signals for each of the at least 4-sub-arrays; combining the M-weighted signals for each of the at least 4-sub-arrays into signals A, B, C and D, respectively; generating an azimuth difference signal per a weighted sum of (A+B) and (C+D) and an elevation difference signal per a weighted sum of (A+C) and (B+D); computing the weights of the azimuth difference signal, such that the azimuth difference signals is driven to a zero signal; and computing the weights of the elevation difference signal, such that the elevation difference signal is driven to a zero signal. N is greater than or equal to four (4) and M is greater than or equal to one (1).