Beam Steering and Beam Stabilization of Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) Seeker for Missile Guidance

Abstract

Emergence of Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) technology has immensely revolutionized the design and development of surveillance radars. Traditional mechanically steered seekers posses inherit limitations of electro-mechanical systems such as limited beam scan rate, inertia, backlash etc. With advances in AESA technology a new airborne pulse seeker for highly specific purpose is developed, whose beam can be controlled and stabilized using adaptive beam control software. Seeker's primary objective is to guide the missile towards intended target with very high precision in order to achieve target interception. Steering and stabilizing the beam of seeker mounted on highly manoeuvring platform is a critical challenge. Beam steering is achieved through phase control using 6 bit phase shifter in each Transmit Receive Modules (TRM) where as beam stabilization to counter platform motion is achieved with the MEMS based gyroscope. The system developed can be characterized with quasi circular planar array designed using highly miniaturized TRM. An inbuilt digital circuitry is designed for beam steering, using Field Programmable Gate Arrays(FPGA's). In this paper authors have presented the beam steering and stabilization scheme, its simulation and validation through implementation of presented scheme in seeker hardware.