Electric scanning self-tracking method of digital multi-beam phased array antenna for dynamic target
Technical Field
The invention relates to a self-tracking method for electric scanning of a digital multi-beam phased array antenna in the field of aerospace measurement and control.
Background
Digital Beam Forming (DBF) is a comprehensive technique in many fields, such as array antennas and signal processing. The DBF technique can be applied to both the receive mode and the transmit mode. Although multi-beam forming is implemented digitally, the greater the number of beam forming, the greater the composition of the device, the lower the corresponding volume and weight and the basic reliability of the system, by controlling the local oscillator to convert several signals to the same intermediate frequency. The digital phased array antenna is widely applied to various platforms due to the characteristics of fast beam scanning, easy beam forming, strong anti-interference capability and the like. In order to realize multiple beams, the traditional phased array antenna system has obvious increase in weight, volume, power consumption and the like, and the basic reliability of the system is also obviously reduced. Because the beam shape is realized in an analog domain, the phase of each path of signal is changed by controlling the phase shifter through the wave controller, and beam scanning is realized; on this basis, multi-beam forming is achieved by increasing the number of channels and phase shifters. Due to the fact that power consumption and weight are increased in multiples, hardware is very complex, and after the beam forming network is designed, the shape of a beam is not easy to change. Because the angle tracking receiver, the digital beam forming DBF unit and the wave control computer are necessary devices for a digital beam system, the self-tracking technology of the beam to the target in the design of the digital multi-beam phased array antenna is a key technology, has great influence on beam pointing, beam gain, side lobe and the like, and even cannot normally receive the target signal in serious conditions, the self-tracking technology of the beam must be carefully analyzed and designed. The traditional self-tracking method of the digital multi-beam phased array antenna is to divide an azimuth elevation difference array, and a digital beam forming unit (DBF) forms an azimuth difference signal and an elevation difference signal and sends the signals to an angle tracking receiver. The difference signal (including azimuth difference signal and elevation difference signal) of the method occupies one downlink beam channel of DBF, but the downlink beam channel is a valuable resource for the digital multi-beam array antenna system, the effective downlink beam channel of the array antenna determines the number of multiple targets supported by the system, and the number of the multiple targets supported by the system is an important index of the array antenna system. To reduce the mutual coupling of the antennas, the spacing of the elements needs to be increased, but increasing the spacing of the elements increases the antenna beam-grating lobes. For phased array antennas, the presence of grating lobes affects the maximum beam scan angle. Therefore, the self-tracking method of the antenna which does not occupy the DBF downlink wave beam channel to the target provided by the invention has important practical significance for the engineering application of the digital multi-wave beam phased array antenna.
Disclosure of Invention
The invention aims to solve the problem of self-tracking of a digital multi-beam phased array antenna on a dynamic target, and provides a method for electrically scanning and self-tracking the dynamic target by the digital multi-beam phased array antenna, which is simple and reliable, has low hardware resource consumption and can improve the self-tracking performance of the multi-beam phased array antenna, and a method for automatically tracking the dynamic target in high real time.
The technical scheme adopted by the invention for solving the technical problems is as follows: a method for electric scanning self-tracking of a dynamic target by a digital multi-beam phased array antenna has the following technical characteristics: in an angle tracking system of a multi-beam phased array antenna, a wave beam pointing target is taken as a center, four symmetrical points deviating from a delta angle are scanned circularly according to the directions of azimuth and elevation by a wave beam array surface and a radio frequency front end, and the tracking target is subjected to off-axis conical electrical scanning and wave beam electrical scanning control by adopting a digital wave beam; the digital beam forming DBF unit utilizes a downlink digital beam to form a DBF channel, receives digital signals sent by a digital multi-beam phased array antenna array surface and a radio frequency front end, generates azimuth and elevation difference beam signals according to beam electric scanning control and beam pointing forming sum and difference signals, sends the sum and difference signals formed by electric scanning sum and difference beam signals to an angle tracking receiver for angle error demodulation, demodulates azimuth error voltage and pitch angle error voltage, and then sends the signals to a digital loop filter of the wave control unit for filtering; and the wave control unit adjusts the azimuth and the pitch angle pointed by the wave beam according to the angle tracking error voltage sent by the receiving angle tracking receiver to obtain the wave beam pointing direction of the tracked target, sends the wave beam pointing direction adjusted in real time to the digital wave beam forming DBF unit to complete wave beam forming and guides the phased array wave beam antenna to realize the self-tracking function of the dynamic target.
Compared with the prior art, the invention has the following beneficial effects:
simple and reliable, and low hardware resource consumption. The invention comprises the following steps: the digital beam forming DBF unit, the angle tracking receiver and the wave control unit form an angle tracking system of the multi-beam phased array antenna, real-time self-tracking of the antenna beam on a target is achieved, the implementation is simple, hardware resources are consumed little, the resource occupation is small, and the cost is reduced. The invention does not need complex equipment and occupy additional downlink DBF channels, and the realization method is simpler. Because the angle tracking receiver, the DBF and the wave control computer are the devices which must be used by the digital beam system, the original angle tracking receiver, the digital beam forming DBF unit and the wave control computer are utilized, no additional hardware is added, only the beam control flow is changed, the interrupt signals are designed according to the 5ms interval, the four scanning points are sequentially and circularly directed to A, B, C, D according to the interrupt signals to realize the real-time self-tracking function of the system to the dynamic target, the device quantity and the additional hardware are not required to be additionally increased, and the hardware resources and the hardware cost are saved.
The invention utilizes the characteristic of digital beam forming of the phased array antenna, adopts the beam to carry out off-axis conical electrical scanning on a tracking target, circularly scans four symmetrical points deviated from a delta angle according to the direction and the pitching direction by taking a pointing target as the center at an interval of 5ms, and can generate direction and pitching difference beam signals in the scanning process. And then the angular tracking receiver demodulates azimuth and pitch angle error voltage according to the difference signal, and finally the wave control equipment adjusts the beam pointing direction in real time according to the angular error voltage to guide the phased array beam antenna to realize the self-tracking function of the dynamic target. Due to the real-time property of the beam to the target direction, the deviation of the target between two times of beam directions is reduced, the target is always in the main beam range of the antenna, and the stability of the amplitude of the receiving/transmitting signal is improved. Thus, the stability of the receiving/transmitting signal can be improved.
Drawings
The invention is further illustrated with reference to the figures and examples.
Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of the self-tracking principle of the electric scanning of the digital multi-beam phased array antenna angle tracking system of the present invention.
Fig. 2 is a schematic diagram of the beam cone scanning spatial relationship of the digital multi-beam phased array antenna of fig. 1.
Fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of the beam-forming principle of the beam-electric scanning of fig. 1.
Fig. 4 is a timing diagram of beam electric scanning control of the multi-beam phased array antenna of fig. 1.
Detailed Description
See fig. 1. According to the invention, in the angle tracking system of the multi-beam phased array antenna, the array surface and the radio frequency front end of the multi-beam phased array antenna take a beam pointing target as the center, circularly scan four symmetrical points deviated from a delta angle according to the direction and the pitching direction, adopt digital beams to carry out cone electrical scanning of an off-axis line on the tracking target, carry out beam electrical scanning control, a digital beam forming DBF unit utilizes a downlink digital beam to form a DBF channel, receives digital signals sent by the array surface and the radio frequency front end of the digital multi-beam phased array antenna, generates direction and pitching difference beam signals according to the beam pointing forming sum and difference signals through the beam electrical scanning control, sends the sum and difference signals formed by the electrical scanning sum and difference beam signals to an angle tracking receiver to carry out angle error demodulation, demodulates an azimuth error voltage and a pitch angle error voltage, and then sends the sum and difference signals to a digital loop filter of the wave control unit to carry out filtering, and the wave control unit adjusts the azimuth and the pitch angle pointed by the wave beam according to the angle tracking error voltage sent by the receiving angle tracking receiver to obtain the wave beam pointing direction of the tracked target, sends the wave beam pointing direction adjusted in real time to the digital wave beam forming DBF unit to complete wave beam forming and guides the phased array wave beam antenna to realize the self-tracking function of the dynamic target.
An angular tracking system for a multi-beam phased array antenna comprising: the digital beam forming DBF unit is connected with a multi-beam phased array antenna array surface and a radio frequency front end and is sequentially connected with a closed loop circuit formed by the beam control unit through an angle tracking receiver, wherein the digital beam forming DBF unit is realized by a multi-stage digital processing board card, has scale and stage number determined according to the scale of the phased array antenna, and has the functions of receiving digital signals sent by the front end phased array antenna array surface and forming sum and difference beam signals according to beam directions. The angle tracking receiver has the same function as that of the traditional measurement and control system; the wave control unit can be realized by software on a wave control computer. The digital beam forming DBF unit receives digital signals sent by the front-end phased array antenna array surface, forms sum and difference signals or sum and difference signals, demodulates the sum and difference signals through the angle tracking receiver to obtain azimuth and pitch angle error voltages, and sends the azimuth and pitch angle error voltages to the wave control unit. And the wave control unit receives the angle tracking error voltage sent by the angle tracking receiver, adjusts the azimuth and the pitch angle pointed by the wave beam according to the angle error voltage to obtain the final wave beam pointing direction of the tracking target, and sends the wave beam pointing direction to the digital wave beam forming DBF unit to complete the final wave beam forming.
Refer to fig. 2 and 3. The electrical scanning of the digital multi-beam phased array antenna beam passes through the target axis, deviates the scanned beam axis from the theoretical beam axis by a beam deviation angle delta, and rotates along the theoretical beam axis. When the theoretical beam axis points to the target, the theoretical beam axis coincides with the target axis, the angle tracking error epsilon is 0, due to the symmetry of rotation, the amplitudes of the received beam signals are consistent, and the target angle tracking difference signal can be considered to be 0. When the angular tracking error epsilon is not equal to 0 (epsilon is less than or equal to delta), namely the theoretical beam axis does not point to the target, the signal amplitude obtained by scanning beams in different pointing directions is different, and the difference is related to the deviation of the azimuth angle and the pitch angle, namely the azimuth difference signal and the pitch difference signal are modulated on the combined signal through amplitude.
Because the electrical scanning of the digital multi-beam phased array antenna beam is not continuous, its scanning points are discrete. Therefore, in design, the digital multi-beam phased array antenna adopts the scanning path of the beam scanning loop according to the azimuth and the elevation, four symmetrical scanning points A, B, C, D shown in fig. 3 are selected, and the four scanning points are alternatively pointed at certain time intervals.
See fig. 4. The scanning interval time is 5ms by comprehensively considering the comprehensive factors such as the hardware response delay time, the tracking loop delay time and the like, and a beam electric scanning time sequence relation diagram of the antenna beam electric scanning shown in the following figure 4 is formed: and (3) interrupting signals at 5ms intervals according to the antenna beam electric scanning timing chart, wherein the interruption signals sequentially circulate beam pointing A, B, C, D four scanning points according to a beam scanning loop, and simultaneously generate array antenna electric scanning azimuth related signals and array antenna electric scanning elevation related signals. The process is as follows: when the wave beam points to the point A, the wave beam pitching direction is a theoretical target pitch angle plus a wave beam deflection angle delta, and the wave beam azimuth direction is a theoretical target direction angle; when the wave beam points to the point B, the wave beam pitching direction is a theoretical target pitch angle, and the wave beam azimuth direction is a theoretical target direction angle minus a wave beam deflection angleδ; when the wave beam points to the point C, the wave beam pitching direction is a theoretical target pitch angle and a wave beam deflection angle delta is reduced, and the wave beam azimuth direction is a theoretical target direction angle; when the wave beam points to the point D, the wave beam pitching direction is a theoretical target pitch angle, and the wave beam azimuth direction is a theoretical target direction angle plus a wave beam deflection angle delta. We can be based on the radiation pattern function of the antenna we can be based on the radiation pattern function G of the antenna
R(theta), angular frequency of electrical scanning of antenna array
And the included angle theta between the beam reference position and the radiation position is obtained, and the output voltage of the angle tracking receiver is obtained:
the digital multi-beam phased array antenna generates a tracking angle error beam signal in scanning, and the process is as follows: and (3) setting an included angle between a beam axis and a reflector axis as a beam deflection angle delta, wherein under the condition of an angle tracking error epsilon < < delta, the output voltage of the angle tracking receiver is as follows: v
In the formula, V
0When the angle tracking error epsilon is equal to 0, the output voltage of the angle tracking receiver,
the angular frequency is electronically scanned for the antenna array and phi is the angle of the target relative to the beam reference position.
We can obtain the current angle error signal and the azimuth tracking angle error epsilon which can be respectively expressed as follows according to the modulation amplitude, modulation phase calculation and angle tracking error epsilon of the amplitude modulation signal output by the angle tracking receiver: azimuth tracking angle error thetaaxCon phi and pitch tracking angle error thetaelε sin φ, where φ is the angle of the target relative to the beam reference position.
The foregoing is directed to the preferred embodiment of the present invention and it is noted that the above-mentioned embodiments illustrate rather than limit the invention, and that those skilled in the art will be able to design alternative embodiments without departing from the scope of the appended claims. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and improvements can be made without departing from the spirit and substance of the invention, and these modifications and improvements are also considered to be within the scope of the invention.