Detection of Defective Elements in Array Antennas Using Artificial Neural Networks and Eigenmode Currents

Abstract

A method for finding defective elements in array antennas is introduced. The method is named as ANN-EC because the method is based on an artificial neural network (ANN) and eigenmode currents (EC). Current distribution of the array antennas is reconstructed from magnitude of their near-field using the ANN-EC. The ANN-EC is applied to dipole array antennas including defective elements. It is demonstrated that defective elements in the array antennas can be found successfully using the ANN-EC.