A Modelled Eigenstructure Based Antenna Array Calibration Algorithm for GPS

Z. Xu, M. Trinkle, D.A.Gray

Abstract:	Antenna array processing techniques have widely applied to GPS area. These techniques use multiple antenna elements combined with an adaptive beamforming algorithm to adjust the radiation pattern of the antenna array to enhance the SNR of the received GPS signal, mitigate against interference and detect the direction of arrival. However, the performance of these techniques is affected by the errors in the antenna array such as array orientation error, gain/phase error and mutual coupling effect. In this paper, a modelled eigenstructure based antenna array calibration algorithm is proposed. This algorithm uses GPS signals as the disjoint calibrating sources to estimate the array orientation error, gain/phase errors and mutual coupling effect in the antenna array with the assumption that if the estimations of these errors are correct, the model should be able to provide the true array manifold and thus this model should be orthogonal to the noise subspace. This paper first describes the signal models of the received signals and the errors and the condition of the solution existent. The three steps iterative calibration algorithm based on these models is described later. At last, the performance of the algorithm is analysed by the simulations and the experiment.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 23rd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2010) September 21 - 24, 2010 Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon Portland, OR
Pages:	3220 - 3228
Cite this article:	Xu, Z., Trinkle, M., D.A.Gray,, "A Modelled Eigenstructure Based Antenna Array Calibration Algorithm for GPS," Proceedings of the 23rd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2010), Portland, OR, September 2010, pp. 3220-3228.
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