IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 55, NO.

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Element Failure Correction for a Large Monopulse Phased Array Antenna With Active Amplitude Weighting
Will P. M. N. Keizer, Member, IEEE
AbstractRecently a new method is introduced to synthesize low sidelobe patterns for planar array antennas with a periodic element arrangement. The method makes use of the property that for a planar array with periodic spacing of the elements, an inverse Fourier transform relationship exists between the array factor and the element excitations. This property is used in an iterative way to derive the array element excitations from the prescribed array factor. The same method is also able to partially compensate the degradation of the sidelobe and gain performance of array patterns due to element failures. Numerical examples of array-failure correction using this method are given for ultralow sidelobe sum and difference patterns of a 5800-element circular array where the failed elements are randomly dispersed across the aperture. The tapers in this array are created exclusively by active weighting in the transmit/receive (T/R) modules using variable gain control. Index TermsAntenna pattern synthesis, element failure correction, phased arrays.

I. INTRODUCTION OR an array populated with 6000 transmit/receive (T/R) modules having a mean-time-between-failure (MTBF) of 200 000 hours [1], on the average each 33 hours a T/R module will fail with full-time (24/7) operation of the array. After one year of continuous operation of the array, 263 of its T/R modules are no longer working, which is 4.4% of the total population. T/R module failures can seriously distort the far-eld patterns of array antennas especially when these patterns feature very low sidelobe characteristics. Methods to compensate T/R module failures are therefore important. In the literature, only a few methods have been reported for array element failure correction. Peters [2] proposed a method to recongure the amplitude and phase distribution of the non-failing elements by minimizing the average sidelobe level, via a conjugate gradient method. This method was applied to the synthesis of sum and difference patterns of planar arrays corrupted by failed elements. In [3], Yeo described an approach based on the genetic algorithm for array failure correction of arbitrary digital beamforming arrays. Yang [4] used vector space projections for the recovery of a reasonable antenna performance when as many as 30% of the elements are inoperable. Mailloux [5] used the method of replacing the
Manuscript received November 23, 2006; revised February 13, 2007. The author, retired, was with TNO Physics and Electronics Laboratory, 2597 AK The Hague, The Netherlands (e-mail: willkeizer@ieee.org). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TAP.2007.902008

signals from failed elements in a digital beamforming receiving array. All those methods were applied to small arrays with a very limited number of failed elements. This paper deals with the recovery as close as possible of the original patterns of a large circular solid-state phased array antenna with monopulse capability operating at X-band. The recovery will be obtained by a method that is recently introduced to synthesize low sidelobe patterns for planar array antennas with a periodic element arrangement [6]. The method uses the property that for a planar array having a uniform spacing of the elements, an inverse Fourier transform relationship exists between the array factor (AF) and the element excitations. This property is used in an iterative way to derive the array element excitations from the prescribed array factor. A brief outline of this synthesis method is given. The vehicle to demonstrate the feasibility of restoring degraded far-eld patterns by synthesizing tapers adapted to failing elements is a 5800-element circular array operating with ultralow sidelobes. The number of failed elements to be considered will be large, up to 30% of the total population. This array will operate with three beamformers to generate three receive beams therefore making monopulse operation feasible. The tapering for getting low sidelobes on receive is realized exclusively by active weighting using amplitude control in the T/R modules. The simulations will include recovered sum and difference patterns together with numerical data on antenna gain, peak sidelobe level and for the difference patterns also relative angle sensitivity. Throughout the paper, it is assumed that the failed elements, defective T/R modules, do not operate at all. II. LOW SIDELOBE PATTERN SYNTHESIS METHOD ) of a rectangular planar phased antenna The far eld F( elements arranged along a rectangular grid and with spaced by in the -direction and by in the -direction, can be written as the product of the embedded element pattern EF and the array factor AF (1) (2) is the complex excitation of the where is the wavenumber is the wavelength, and . th element,

0018-926X/$25.00 2007 IEEE

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Fig. 1. Block diagram of a T/R module with three receive outputs.

Equation (2) forms a nite double Fourier series that relates the element excitation coefcients of the array to its AF through a discrete inverse Fourier transform. AF is periodic in -dimension over the interval and periodic in -dimen(the dimensions of the grating lobe sion over the interval lattice in space). Since AF is related to the element excitations through a discrete inverse Fourier transform, a discrete direct Fourier transform applied on AF over the rectangle with and will yield the element excitation codimensions efcients . These Fourier transform relationships are used in a iterative way to synthesize low sidelobe patterns. The iterative synthesis method consists of following simple seven steps. that is usu1) Select an initial set of element excitations ally the uniform distribution for the sum pattern or the linear odd/uniform distribution for the difference pattern; with a 2) Fourier transform the element excitations points 2-D inverse FFT to arrive at the array factor AF samples with consisting of by applying zero padding; 3) Match the sidelobe region of AF to the sidelobe requirements and left unchanged the AF values not violating the sidelobe thresholds like the AF values contained in the mainlobe region; points 4) Fourier transform the modied AF with a 2-D FFT to get an new set of element excitations; samples of element excitations to the 5) Truncate the samples associated with the array elements; 6) Enforce a variety of optional constraints on the resulting element excitation samples which involves the following (optional) steps: a) dealing with amplitude-only/phase-only synthesis replace the phases/magnitudes of the updated element excitations by those of the initial element excitations of step 1. By skipping step 6a), the low sidelobe pattern synthesis will be of the complex weighted type; b) take element failures into account by setting their excitation values to zero and for a non rectangular shape of the aperture do the same with the excitations of the elements outside the aperture;

c) apply a limit to the dynamic range of permissible magnitudes of the element excitations. 7) Repeat steps 2 through 7 until the sidelobe region of AF of step 2 matches the desired sidelobe characteristics or the maximum allowed number of iterations is reached. far eld samples Any low sidelobe AF consisting of element excitations. This synthesis can be realized with method arranges that the contribution of the excitations outside samples for a rectangular aperthe aperture ( exture without element failures) is transferred to the citations located inside the aperture. More detailed information on this synthesis method can be found in [6] where also is described how for apertures with triangular element positions the above synthesis method still can be applied by using an afne coordinate transformation [7] that converts the triangular grid into a square one. All synthesized tapers presented in this paper were obtained resulting in 1024 1024 far-eld directions with for AF. The applied sidelobe requirements for the receive patterns were also imposed on the part of AF located in invisible . This was done to assure that the pattern is space scannable without degradation of the sidelobe performance. The synthesized tapers of the presented receive patterns were realized with amplitude-only synthesis and subjected to a dynamic range constraint. The ratio of the maximum/minimum magnitude of the element excitations was for the sum patterns limited to 23 dB and to 26 dB for the difference patterns. III. ARRAY AND MODULE ARCHITECTURE The phased array to be considered in this paper is a circular array with 1.3 m diameter operating at X-band and populated by 5800 elements arranged on a triangular grid along 172 rows and 88 columns. The row and column spacing is 0.0075 m and 0.015 m, respectively. It is assumed that this array is employed in a radar system using monopulse techniques to obtain target angle tracking information from a single echo pulse. Monopulse operation requires three separate receive antenna beams, a sum beam and two difference (azimuth and elevation) beams, so that the received echoes from the three simultaneous beams can be correlated to get target angle estimates. Each of these three receive beams employs a separate beamformer. The T/R modules of this array have three receive output channels containing in each channel a phase shifter and a variable gain amplier (VGA) as shown in Fig. 1. These VGAs serve to implement the amplitude tapers for the three receive beams. With the three receive channel conguration, the amplitude weighting to get low sidelobes is complete actively implemented in the T/R modules. Using active amplitude weighting, all three beamformers can consist of simple inline uniform combiners, which greatly simplies the beamforming architecture. See [8] for additional details. The two difference patterns are realized by introducing an opposite phase shift between the two selected array halves using the phase shifters of the respective T/R module receive channels. The gain control range of the VGAs is of the order of 40 dB using 8-bit resolution which allows the use of ultralow sidedB for the sum beam and lobes for the monopulse patterns, dB for the difference beams.

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IV. SIMULATED RESULTS It is assumed that the considered array is part of a high performance military multifunction radar system that has to be operated in a heavy clutter environment and must detect and track targets with very low radar cross sections. By using ultralow sidelobe beams, clutter returns through the sidelobes can significantly reduced therefore facilitating detection and tracking of very small targets under severe clutter conditions. A. Failure Free Monopulse Patterns A circular Taylor taper for dB sidelobes with was needed to get dB sidelobes for the sum pattern on receive. For the difference patterns a circular Bayliss taper for dB sidelobes and was required to obtain dB sidelobes. The difference pattern sidelobe level is 3 dB higher than that of the sum pattern in order to equalize the sidelobe clutter returns from the highest sidelobes in the sum and difference patterns [9]. Among the available analytical tapers, both selected tapers feature maximum aperture efciency for the specied sidelobe levels. Due to the active weighting in the T/R modules both tapers were quantized by 8-bit resolution. The top plot of Fig. 2(a) shows a u-cut of the sum pattern on receive at 10 GHz through the main beam peak in absence of element failures. This beam, positioned at broadside, is produced by the dB circular Taylor taper depicted in Fig. 2(b). The bottom plot of Fig. 2(a) displays the distribution of the peak sidelobe levels of the monopulse sum pattern for entire visible space, . This histogram demonstrates that all sidelobes dB. The selected Taylor taper has an aperture efare below ciency of 0.5916 and the maximum variation between the element amplitudes is 24 dB as demonstrated by Fig. 2(b). The 2-D far-eld from which the peak sidelobe distribution of Fig. 2(a) was derived, was computed by a two-dimensional Chirp -transform producing 1025 1025 equispaced far-eld samples in the domain . The other peak sidelobe distributions herein this paper were computed with the same resolution for the 2-D far-elds. Fig. 3(a) shows the u-cut of the azimuth difference pattern at 10 GHz prodB circular Bayliss taper. The associated aperduced by the ture amplitude distribution obtained by active weighting using 8-bit quantization, depicted in Fig. 3(b), has an aperture efis 0.644. ciency of 0.3556 and the relative angle sensitivity The relative angle sensitivity [9] qualies the difference slope for the given sidelobe level and has a maximum value 1 for the odd linear taper, which features the steepest difference slope but also the highest sidelobe level. In the simulation of the patterns, the embedded element pat. Results for the elevation differtern was set equal to ence pattern are not included due to the strong similarity with the azimuth difference pattern. Both the Taylor and the Bayliss taper are not optimum tapers with respect to aperture efciency. Better results are achieved when the sum and difference tapers are synthesized with the new method of Section II as will be demonstrated by the following results. of the sum pattern for Fig. 4(a) shows the u-cut for dB sidelobes with no failures at 10 GHz obtained by this , synthesis method. Due to the embedded element pattern the far-out sidelobes in Fig. 4(a) fall off compared to the near-in

Fig. 2. Receive sum pattern of the 5800-element active weighted monopulse array at 10 GHz without element failures produced by a 52 dB Taylor taper. (a) Far-eld u-cut at v = 0 and distribution of peak sidelobe levels for entire  visible space. (b) Circular 52 dB Taylor taper with n = 12.

sidelobes. The associated taper realized by 8-bit quantization is shown in Fig. 4(b). The amplitude constraint by which the ratio of the maximum and minimum element amplitude values was limited to 23 dB is fully met. Like the circular Taylor taper, the synthesized sum taper with an aperture efciency of 0.6310, dB sidelobes with respect to the main lobe peak. provides Fig. 5(a) shows the u-cut of the azimuth difference pattern at for dB sidelobes produced by the synthesized amplitude distribution as depicted in Fig. 5(b). The dynamic range

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Fig. 3. Azimuth difference pattern of the 5800-element active weighted monopulse array at 10 GHz without element failures produced by a 48 dB Bayliss taper. (a) Far-eld u-cut at v = 0 including the distribution of peak  sidelobe level for entire visible space. (b) 48 dB Bayliss taper with n = 12.

Fig. 4. Receive sum pattern of the 5800-element active weighted monopulse array at 10 GHz without element failures produced by the 51 dB synthesized taper. (a) Far-eld u-cut at v = 0 including the distribution of the peak sidelobe levels for entire visible space. (b) Synthesized 51 dB sum taper.

of this taper amounts 26 dB, which is 12 dB less than the amplitude range of the Bayliss taper of Fig. 3(b) and agrees with the specied dynamic range requirement. The aperture efciency of the synthesized difference taper is 0.3864 and the relative angle amounts 0.665. sensitivity As can be seen from Figs. 4(b) and 5(b) both synthesized tapers show substantial inverse tapering near the periphery of the aperture. Implementation of such tapers is readily achievable with active weighting in the T/R modules, but less convenient with passive weighting in the beamformer. One can also observe

that the edge illumination of the sum taper, Fig. 4(b), lacks radial symmetry but instead features large amplitude uctuations of the order of 8 dB. Identical large uctuations near the aperture edge occur also with the difference taper in Fig. 5(b). The effect of these uctuations is comparable to that of serrations along the edge of the main reector of a compact antenna test range [10]. The serrated edge of such a main reector tapers the amplitude of the reected elds near the edge to improve quality of the test zone by reducing the phase and amplitude ripples in the quiet zone of the compact antenna test range. In the same

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Fig. 5. Azimuth difference pattern of the 5800-element active weighted monopulse array at 10 GHz without element failures produced by the 48 dB synthesized difference taper. (a) Far-eld u-cut at v = 0 including the distribution of the peak sidelobe levels for entire visible space. (b) Synthesized 48 dB azimuth difference taper.

way, the 8 dB amplitude uctuations near the periphery of the array aperture in Figs. 4(b) and 5(b) decorrelate and reduce the contributions of the discontinuity aperture/free space (boundary caused by the nite size of the array) to the sidelobe region of the pattern. The result is an improved sidelobe performance. B. Recovered Patterns in Case of Element Failures The effect of 5% failing elements randomly dispersed across the aperture on the receive sum pattern produced by the

Fig. 6. Far eld u-cuts (v = 0) of the receive sum patterns and associated sidelobe distributions for 5% random element failures at 10 GHz. (a) 52 dB Taylor taper. (b) Synthesized 45 dB sum taper.

dB Taylor taper can be seen in Fig. 6(a). This gure shows of the sum pattern at 10 GHz. Due the u-cut at

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to the element failures, the sidelobes are raised with 10 dB while the gain is decreased with 0.17 dB. Recovery of the original sum pattern using the method of Section II results in a 5 dB reduction of the peak sidelobe level and a 0.59 dB gain improvement compared to the pattern of the corrupted of the recovered sum Taylor taper. The u-cut at dB sidelobes is shown in Fig. 6(b). pattern featuring Fig. 7(a) shows the impact of the same 5% element failures on the azimuth difference pattern at 10 GHz produced by of the Bayliss taper. Fig. 7(b) depicts the u-cut the recovered azimuth difference pattern of which the gain is raised with 0.69 dB, the sidelobes are lowered with 6 dB and the relative angle sensitivity improves from 0.628 to 0.694 compared to the difference pattern of the corrupted Bayliss taper. Fig. 8(a) shows the synthesized taper that produces the recovered sum pattern on receive of Fig. 7(a) and Fig. 8(b) represents the synthesized azimuth difference taper that is responsible for the pattern of Fig. 7(b). The holes visible in both tapers are caused by the failing elements. Similar monopulse pattern recovery simulations have also been performed for 10% and 30% randomly dispersed element failures. Table I contains the results of these simulations with respect to antenna gain, peak sidelobe level (SLL) and relative angle sensitivity for the three considered element failure cases. These results show that full recovery of the original sidelobe performance is not obtainable, but for all considered element failure cases a partial improvement of 56 dB in peak sidelobe level is feasible for all monopulse patterns including a full recovery of the original relative angle sensitivity. With 30% element failures the obtained peak sidelobe levels are below dB for the recovered sum pattern and below dB for the recovered difference patterns. Without pattern recovery the peak dB for the Taylor taper and sidelobe levels are raised to dB for the Bayliss taper. The peak sidelobe level results of the recovered patterns are the best ones obtained by the used synthesis method. Lower values are possible for the near-in sidelobes in the region with a well dened lobing structure (10 dB for 5% random failing elements) but not for the far-out sidelobes. The pattern recovery results for the sum and azimuth difference pattern in Table I for 30% random element failures demonstrate that the used synthesis method is also quite suitable for the design of low sidelobe sum and difference tapers with thinned arrays. C. Two-Way Signal Losses due to Element Failures Element failures have a different effect on the transmit pattern then on the receive patterns. Both type of patterns experience a drop in antenna gain, but the transmit pattern does not practice a sidelobe level rise when an uniform taper is applied in order to maximize effective radiated power (ERP). With an uniform taper the peaks of the highest sidelobes of a circular array are at level of dB that is not affected by random element failures even not by 30% failing elements. The main effects of failing elements are a decrease both in gain and transmitted power and therefore in ERP. Table II list the effects of element failures for the array on transmit. Shown are the reduction in antenna gain for the uniP and the loss in form taper, the loss in transmitted power

Fig. 7. Far eld u-cuts (v = 0) of the azimuth difference patterns and associated sidelobe distributions for 5% random element failures at 10 GHz. (a) 48 dB Bayliss taper. (b) Synthesized 42 dB azimuth difference taper.

effective radiated power ERP for 0%, 5%, 10%, and 30% failing T/R modules. The loss in ERP is dominated by the loss in transmitted power. For 5% element failures, the loss in ERP

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TABLE I VARIATION IN GAIN AND MAXIMUM SIDELOBE LEVEL (SLL) FOR SUM AND AZIMUTH DIFFERENCE PATTERNS ON RECEIVE OF THE 5800-ELEMENT ACTIVE WEIGHTED MONOPULSE ARRAY AT 10 GHZ FOR ANALYTICAL AND SYNTHESIZED RECEIVE TAPERS DUE TO RANDOMLY FAILING ELEMENTS. OF THE DIFFERENCE DATA FOR THE RELATIVE ANGLE SENSITIVITY PATTERN ARE INCLUDED

TABLE II LOSS OF EFFECTIVE RADIATED POWER ERP FOR THE 5800-ELEMENT ARRAY WITH UNIFORM ILLUMINATION AT 10 GHZ DUE TO RANDOMLY FAILING ELEMENTS

TABLE III TWO-WAY RADAR SIGNAL LOSS FOR THE SUM AND DIFFERENCE CHANNELS OF THE 5800-ELEMENT ACTIVE WEIGHTED ARRAY AT 10 GHZ USING ANALYTICAL OR SYNTHESIZED TAPERS ON RECEIVE DUE TO RANDOMLY FAILING ELEMENTS

Fig. 8. Synthesized tapers for the recovered receive sum and azimuth difference patterns for 5% random element failures. (a) Sum taper for the pattern of Fig. 6(b) producing dB sidelobes. (b) Azimuth difference taper for the patdB sidelobes. tern of Fig. 7(b) producing

045

042

D. Wide Angle Phase-Only Sidelobe Nulling on Transmit The rise in sidelobe levels on receive due to element failures, although reduced by the synthesized tapers, will cause an increase in received radar clutter and hampers therefore the detection of very small (stealth) targets in a severe clutter environment. Especially low elevation targets will be accompanied by strong ground or sea clutter. A way to mitigate such an increase in received sidelobe clutter, is to reduce the two-way sidelobe response be applying wide angle phase-only sector nulling for the transmit pattern. Fig. 9(a) illustrates how the low sidelobe pattern synthesis method using phase-only nulling can suppress in the transmit pattern the peak sidelobes down to dB for all directions below in case of 5% random element failures. The phase taper responsible for this nulling is shown in Fig. 9(b) and is realized with 6-bit phase shifters. The holes visible in this taper represent the failed elements. The penalty of this phase-only nulling is a 0.99 dB additional loss in antenna gain on transmit thereby increasing the total two-way radar system loss for 5% element failures to dB. Since in the radar equation the distance R from the , a system loss of 0.97 radar to the target shows up as

amounts 0.39 dB, and increases to 2.81 dB for 30% element failures. In contrast to the monopulse patterns, no compensation is possible for the transmit pattern. Table III presents for the considered element failure cases the two-way radar signal loss consisting of the loss in ERP on transmit and that in antenna gain on receive for the sum and difference patterns. The data refer both to the two analytical tapers, Taylor and Bayliss, and the corresponding synthesized tapers. This table shows that for 5% failing elements an improvement of 0.02 dB for the sum channel and 0.13 dB for the difference channels can be obtained by using the synthesized tapers adapted to element failures. Without pattern recovery, 5% element failures cause a 0.57 dB two-way radar signal reduction for the sum channel and 0.56 dB for the azimuth difference channel. With 30% element failures, the two-way radar signal losses rise to about 4 dB for the analytical tapers and almost 3 dB for the synthesized tapers.

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V. CONCLUSION Simulations performed for a 5800-element circular array featuring ultralow sidelobes for the three monopulse patterns have demonstrated that in case of element failures performance degradation can largely mitigated by pattern recovery using the presented low sidelobe pattern synthesis method. For 5% randomly failed elements pattern recovery provides a full compensation for the reduction in radar detection range due to failed elements and an improvement of the peak sidelobe level with 5 dB compared to the corrupted analytical patterns, Taylor and Bayliss. Key requirement to this achievement is the application of active amplitude weighting in the three receive channels of the T/R modules. REFERENCES
[1] A. K. Agrawal and E. L. Holzman, Active phased array design for high reliability, IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 35, pp. 12041211, Oct. 1999. [2] T. J. Peters, A conjugate gradient-based algorithm to minimize the sidelobe level of planar arrays with element failures, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 39, pp. 14971504, Oct. 1991. [3] B. Yeo and Y. Lu, Array failure correction with a genetic algorithm, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 47, pp. 823828, May 1999. [4] Y. Yang and H. Stark, Design of self-healing arrays using vector-space projections, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 49, pp. 526534, Apr. 2001. [5] R. J. Mailloux, Array failure correction with a digitally beamformed array, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 44, pp. 15431550, Dec. 1996. [6] W. P. M. N. Keizer, Fast low-sidelobe synthesis for large planar array antennas utilizing successive fast Fourier transforms of the array factor, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 55, pp. 715722, Mar. 2007. [7] Y. T. Lo and S. W. Lee, Afne transformation and its application to antenna arrays, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 13, pp. 890896, Nov. 1965. [8] A. K. Agrawal and E. L. Holzman, Beamformer architectures for active phased-array radar antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 47, pp. 432442, Mar. 1999. [9] E. T. Bayliss, Design of monopulse antenna difference patterns with low sidelobes, Bell Syst. Tech. J., pp. 623650, MayJune 1968. [10] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory: Analysis and Design, 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 1997, pp. 846847. Will P. M. N. Keizer (M99) received the M.S. degree in electrical and electronics engineering (cum laude) from the Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in 1970. From 1971 to 2002, he was with TNO Physics and Electronics Laboratory, The Hague, The Netherlands, as a Research Scientist and Technical Manager in the eld of microwave components, antennas, propagation and radar. He has been involved in the NATO Anti Air Warfare System (NAAWS) study directed by the U.S. Navy, and aiming at an advanced sensor suite for future warships. He was one of the key persons in the initiation of the APAR naval multifunction active phased array radar based on the NAAWS concept that is now in operational use withThe Netherlands and German navies. He was responsible for the design of the APAR antenna aperture consisting of waveguide radiators featuring a 60 degree scan angle capability in all directions over a 30% bandwidth at the X-band. His research interests include phased array antennas, near-eld antenna testing, microwaves, low-angle radio-wave propagation, multifunction phased array radar and synthetic aperture radar. Since 2003 he is retired.

Fig. 9. (a) Transmit sum pattern of the 5800-element array at 10 GHz produced by (b) the synthesized phase taper using 6-bit phase shifters in combination with uniform amplitude illumination. The aperture is corrupted by 5% randomly dispersed failing elements.

dB means that the maximum detection range of the radar is decreased by only 5.5% assuming that the system noise gure is not affected by element failures. From the results presented in this paper, one can conclude that by applying pattern recovery the original gain performance for all monopulse beams can be recovered even when the aperture is corrupted by 30% failing elements. Degradation of the peak sidelobe levels on receive cannot be fully compensated like the pattern gains, but improvements of the order of 56 dB are feasible for all monopulse beams. For 5% random element failures the reduction of the radar detection range can be fully eliminated. With T/R modules featuring a MTBF of 200 000 hours, this means that the array can be operated full-time (24/7) for more then a year at almost original performance without the need of corrective maintenance in the sense of repair or replacement of defective T/R modules. All herein presented simulation results were obtained with the Advanced Phased Array Simulator APAS. The total computation time including the synthesis of the tapers was less then 20 minutes on a laptop computer with a Pentium M 750 processor running at 1.86 GHz.