Webcast

As phased arrays become ubiquitous in both military and civilian applications, beamsteering and beam stabilization are two hot topic areas. These concepts allow end system designers to improve system performance by pinpointing and focusing radiation beams from the array. This allows the system to more precisely track targets, but also improves power consumption. One problem with all of this is if the array system is moving in addition to the targets movement. Imagine a vehicle with an array system affixed to the roof. As the vehicle goes over terrain, if nothing is changed in the beam, the beam angle moves with the vehicle motion. To keep tracking the original target, phase offsets must be applied to the elements within the array system. In order to determine these offsets, the azimuth and elevation angles of the vehicle must be known. An inertial measurement unit (IMU) can be used to measure the current vehicle orientation and then the computational system can calculate the phase offsets and apply them to stabilize/correct the beam and keep it pointing at the desired location. This webcast specifically covers how Analog Devices IMUs with next generation performance can be coupled with MATLAB and the specialized MATLAB RF Phased Array System Toolbox to simulate this exact scenario. In this demo, an ADIS16480 IMU senses yaw and pitch and a MATLAB GUI translates these inputs to azimuth and elevation to ultimately correct a simulated beam pattern to a desired steering angle.