Relationships between Active Element Patterns and Mutual Impedance

Matrices in Phased Array Antennas

David F. Kelley
Department of Electrical Engineering
Bucknell University
Lewisburg, PA 17837
dkelley@bucknell.edu

1. Introduction

In the cont,c:xt of phased array antennas an active element pattern is the radiation
1):ittrrii of :in array when only one element in the array is excited and all of the others
:ire t,c:riiiiniit,etiin some specified impedance, typically the output impedance of the
s o i i ~ c ( ~tliiit,
s
riorinally drive the elements. Initially the concept of the active element
I):ittcrii w i s cwiploycd ils an intermediate step in theoretical analyses of phased array
1)chavior ( s w . for example, [l-4]), but more recently it has been championed as a
rischil r;i,di;itinn pattern analysis tool in its own right [5-71.
It will be sliown hcrc that a combination of two types of active element patterns
c m lx ~iscdto find the mutual impedance matrix that relates the element terminal
voltages of i~ phased array to the terminal currents. The first type is found by
forcing- tlio t,erniinal voltage of the active element to be unity a t zero phase while
t,hc t,crniiiinls of a11 the other elements are shorted. The second type is obtained by
forcing tlic tcrmiiial current to be unity while the undriven feed points are openc:irciiited. The former is called the short-circuit active element pattern and the latter
tllc operr-circii,it active element pattern.
2. Derivation of the Relationship

By t,hc principle of superposition, the total field E(B,#) radiated by a fully-excited

arrtty ciin 1)c expressed using active element patterns as
N

where N is the total number of elements in the array, Vn is the voltage measured
a t the tcrniinals of the n t h element, In is the current flowing into the nth element,
g,q,,, is the short-circuit active element pattern of the nth element, and go,, is the
open-circuit active clement pattern. Quantities in boldface type are vectors. Note
that the active elcnicnt patterns are not simply radiation patterns but contain both
magnitude i ~ n dphase data. By structuring the active element pattern data into
lllittrices the riidiation pattern is given by

where A I is the number of directions in which pattern data is measured or computed.

The size of each matrix or vector is indicated by the matrix subscripts, and the ( B , # )
0-7803-7330-8/02$17.0002002IEEE

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tlcpciitlcncc iiiid 17 subscripts are omitted to improve clarity. The active element
IxLttcni ni;itriccs
and [.yoc] are structured such tha.t each column corresponds
to tlic ptittcrn data for a given element; thus, column 1 of [gsc]is the short-circuit
:ictive clcnicnt pattern of array element 1. To form the matrices used in (2) the
vector field quantities must be decomposed into their 8- and $-components. For
exiiiiplc. t,hc iippcr half of [ E ]might contain the 8-components of the electric field,
(lat,;i: while the lowor half would contain the @components. The matrix [E]would
consist, of oiily one component type if the other component type were of no interest.
Thc vcctor data in t,he active element pattern matrices are likewise decomposed.
The uriiv clenient terminal voltages and currents are related to each other via the
iiiutiial impedance matrix [Z]
according to

111gcnc:r:il t,lic ciiiicellation rulc docs not apply in matrix arithmetic. To eliminate

[ I ]from 110th sides of (4) would not normally be a valid operation. However, in this
casc the unicluencss theorem implies that the matrix quantities that pre-multiply
[ I ]on Ixjth sides of (4) must be the same; that is, a given set of array feed currents
nii~stproduce a unique radiation pattern. This leads to the result

If t,lic: iuniilm- of Iiumlxr of radiation pattern observation angles is equal to the

i i r i n i l m of imxy clanicnts (that is, if 11.1 = N),
then (5) can be rearranged as

which implies tliRt the mutual impedance matrix of an array can be determined by
making niriwir(:ineiits of (or computing) the short-circuit and open-circuit active
clcriiciit pat,tcrns of each element in the array. While this may seem daunting for
iui iirriiy of hiindrcds or thousands of elements, keep in mind that most of the interior elciiiciits in a uniformly-spaced array will have nearly identical active element
piLtteriis. Syrnnietry in the array can also be exploited to minimize the number of
incitsurcinents or computations.
Note that (5) can be considered to be N systems of equations, each one of which
detcrniines one column of [Z].
For example, the first column of [ Z ] represented
,
by
is given by
the symbol [Z]<,

whcre [,yo,] is the first column of the open-circuit active element pattern. If the
number of observation angles is larger than the number of elements (A4> N),then
c:icll coluiiin of [Z] satisfies an overdetermined system of equations. Using the least
squares approxirnittion method, the best estimate of the mutual impedance matrix
is given by

PI = {

[YSCI+

[g,qcl}-l [YSCI+ [%cl

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(8)

where the dagger synihol (t) indicates tlie coniplcx col1,jugate trnrisposc opcratioli.
If there are significant magnitude aiid phase errors in thc: tictive elcincnt piLt,tcrii
data, then the use of (8) with a very large niunber of element piLttrrii diita point,s
(such that A{ >> N) inay help to mitigate those errors.
3. C o m p u t a t i o n a l R e s u l t s

A very simple example will lie used to illustrate some of the results presented hcrc.
A four-element array of unevenly-spaced half-wave dipoles is analyzed using EZNEC
Pro 3.0, a commnercially-available iinplementation of the method of inonients program NEC-2. The four dipoles are parallel to each other and to tlie z-axis with
their centers lying along the y-axis. The spacing between elements 1 and 2 i:; 0.3
A, between elenicnts 2 arid 3 is 0.4 A; and bctwccn clcrncnts 3 ;uid 4 is 0.6 A. Tlie
short-circuit and open-circuit active clenient patterns are coinputed for 6' = '30" and
the four 4 values 0":90", 180", and 270", wliich results in it sqwtre IniLtrix iii ciich
case. The impedance matrix is also computed.
The open-circnit active element pattcrn matrix ol,t.iiiricd for this array is

1
1

0.665 j10.5 0.839 j10.4 0.197 j10.5 0.530 j10.8

0.005 + 311.4 -10.7 - 33.03 10.4 - ,j;$.OZ -1O.ci - ,72.64
0.665 + j10.5 0.839 + j10.4 0.107 + ,jlO.S 0.5:10 + j l O . 8
0.159 j10.5 10.7 - 34.16 -11.0 - ~ ' 2 . 4 8 10.5 - 34.32

1
1

($1)

According to (5), tlie niittrix [ g 4 should be equal t,o tlic product of [,qsc]
;tiid [ Z ] .
The actunl product obtained for t,hc four-cleinent array is

[s'5c1

I'[

0.665 j10.5 0.846 j10.4 0.196 j10.5

0.902 + j11.4 -10.7 - j3.03 10.4 - 33.92
0.665 :j10.5 0.846 j10.4 0.196 310.5
0.162+j10.5 10.7-j4.16
-ll.O-j2.48

0.530 -t ,710.8
-10.6 - j2.64
0.530 + j1O.8
10.5-j4.22

(10)

Note that thc results shown in (9) and (10) are virtually identicd Tlic snia11 errors
can be attributed to the liinititt,ioris of thc analysis software uscd to compute the
matrix product (Mathcad 8) and the limited precision of the ontpnt data tables ~ i i a d e
avai1al)le by EZNEC. Tlic distance r t,o the array and several coninion corist ants
(such as 1/4n and r / ) liavc been factorcd out of t,he pattern data.
4. C o n c l u s i o n

The reltitioiiship derived hcre I)etweon tlie short- and open-circuit active eleiiicnt
Imtterns and t,hc mutiin1 iinpeclimce nmtrix might prove nseful in situations where
it, is tlifficiilt to make accurate ineasurenients of tcrlninal voltages i ~ n dcurrenix or
S I i m " m s . Tlie iiiiped;nicc matrix c i ~ nlie determined from the iictive element
patt,c:ni tliiti~iiisteid. If thcre tire significimt measurement errors in the pat tern
data. then (8) can IK nsed with a large number of observation angles to oht,aiti an
:tccuriite approximatioil of the impedance matrix.

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5 . References

[I] P. W . Hannan, The element-gain paradox for a phased-array antenna, IEEE

Trans. Antennas Prop., vol. AP-12, pp. 422-433, July 1964.

[2] W. Wasylkiwskyj and W. K. Kahn, Element patterns and active reflection

coefficient in uniform phased arrays, IEEE Trans. Antennas Prop., vol. AP22, pp. 207-212, March 1974.
[3] J . L. Allen, Gain and impedance variation in scanned dipole arrays, IEEE
Trans. Antennas Prop., vol. AP-10, pp. 566-572, September 1962.
[4] L. Parad, Some mutual impedance effects in phased array, Microwave Journal, vol. 5, pp. 87-89, January 1962.
[5] D. F. Kelley and W. L. Stutzman, Array antenna modeling methods that
include mutual coupling effects, IEEE Trans. Antennas Prop., vol. 41, pp,
1625-1632, December 1993.
(61 D. M. Pozar, The active element pattern, IEEE Trans. Antennas Prop., vol.
42, pp. 1176-1178, August 1994.

[7] H. A. Aumann, A. J . Fenn, and F. G. Willwerth, Phased array antenna calibration and pattern prediction using mutual coupling measurements, IEEE
Trans. Antennas Prop., vol. 37, pp. 844850, July 1989.

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