A. O. Manichev, A. A. Zakharov

In practice, it is often required to measure the amplitude and phase of the excitation of phased antenna array (PAA) elements at several frequencies. This measurement can be performed with a probe connected to a measuring setup and sequentially placed on the PAA elements. Unfortunately, movement of the probe is a time - and labor-consuming procedure, which can even damage the PAA elements. In order to avoid this drawback, it is desirable to perform measurements with a fixed probe, for example, using the so-called switching method described in [2]. In order to provide high-speed measurements, it is desirable to use the sweep mode of the measuring setup. However, this method imposes certain requirements on the amplitude-phase distribution (APD) of the PAA under test, while, in many PAAs, the APD is frequency-dependent to a great extent. Therefore, in general, the switching method cannot be used in the sweep mode of the measuring setup. A method for measuring the amplitude and phase of the PAA elements with a fixed probe in the sweep mode is proposed in this study. This method is based on the version of the switching method that uses the Walsh-Hadamard transform to process the measured data. The estimates of the uncertainties of the complex-valued excitations of PAA elements determined with the proposed method are obtained. Operation of the proposed method is verified by means of mathematical simulation of the measurement procedure. The results of simulation confirm the efficiency of this method and the applicability of the obtained estimates of the measurement uncertainties.