Near-Field Angle Measurement of HPM Helical Array Antennas With Its Closed-Loop Control

• Published in: IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters Vol. 24; no. 7; pp. 1566 - 1569
• Main Authors: He, Huaping, Zhang, Heng, Chen, Jie, Sun, Yunfei, Zhang, Qiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.07.2025; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antenna arrays; Antenna measurements; Antenna pointing closed-loop control; antenna pointing judgment; Closed loops; Control theory; Dipole antennas; Directive antennas; Feedback control; Helical antennas; helical array antenna; High power microwaves; high-power microwave (HPM); Linear antenna arrays; Microwave antenna arrays; Microwave antennas; Microwave measurement; Near fields; Phased arrays; Proportional integral derivative; Radar antennas
• ISSN: 1536-1225; 1548-5757
• DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2025.3534063

Measuring the pointing angles of high-power microwave (HPM) helical array antennas presents significant challenges, resulting in a lack of effective angle control schemes in current research. To address this issue, this study proposes a near-field pointing detection method that utilizes dipole antennas for closed-loop control of HPM helical array antenna positioning. The evaluation results obtained via interpolation methods show that the absolute angle error is less than 0.701<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">^\circ</tex-math></inline-formula>. In addition, this work also conducted closed-loop control experiments on HPM helical array antennas based on proportional-integral-derivative control algorithm. Compared to conventional open-loop control systems, the proposed closed-loop control strategy produces a control curve that closely aligns with the theoretical calculation curve, realizing lower steady-state error and improved system robustness.