Accurate Data Match and Call Method for the Thermal Compensation Database of the Reflector Antenna

Abstract

Abstract The influence of thermal deformation on the performance of reflector antennas has become increasingly significant with the increasing aperture and working frequency. The use of a thermal compensation database is an efficient method to compensate for the deformation caused by the non-uniform temperature distribution. However, how to efficiently and accurately match and call the database remains as one of the tough challenges for the antenna thermal compensation system to achieve real time compensation. Therefore, this study proposes a data match and call method for the thermal compensation database of the reflector antenna, matching the database from three aspects: the overall rms match of temperature data, the similarity area match of each data sample, and the key area match of key structural positions. The validation of this method is demonstrated in an example. The difference between the pointing adjustment amount calculated by the matched data and the collected data was found to be less than 1″, which satisfied the requirements of practical engineering, thus achieving real-time thermal compensation of the antenna.