STK 3D Electronically Steerable Phased Array Antenna Plugin

Pg 1 of xxAGI www.agi.com

STK 3D Electronically Steerable Phased Array Antenna Plugin

Trey Spetch, Jerry Odhner, and Kristen Jones

Pg 2 of 15AGI www.agi.com

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

n = 3

/2

Crossed-Dipole Element


Dihedral Angles to Boresight and ToObject

• Dihedral Angles for Boresight and ToObject (


Plugin Model

ToObjectAzToObjectAz

ToObjectElToObjectEl

m, n, m, n,

CoordXform

G(m, n, )

BoresightVertBoresightVert

BoresightHorizBoresightHoriz

GainToObjectGainToObject


Beam Steered to Invisible Vehicle


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


Directivity Visualization Using STK Coverage


5 x 5 Array, 1 GHz

Effect of Changing Array Dimensions

Increasing the number of elements along one axis of the antenna decreases the beamwidth in that direction

5 x 10 Array, 1 GHz

10 x 10 Array, 1 GHz


Effects of WavelengthFor 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


Questions?

STK 3D Electronically Steerable Phased Array Antenna Plugin

Documents

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