Effects of array errors on fast direction finding performance in non-cooperative passive detection

Theoretical analyses were performed by applying the methods such as matrix norm and Taylor series, and so on, to quantitatively study the fast direction finding performance of a non-cooperative passive detection system with array errors, such as antenna pattern error, array element position error, mutual coupling error and channel error. The estimation error ranges of the target direction mapping angle were determined for ideal and real arrays, and the effects of array errors on beam forming were studied. It is concluded that the estimation error of the target direction mapping angle is not sensitive to the array errors. Simulation results show that the deviation and mean square deviation in estimation of the target direction mapping angle are less than 0.015 rad for a 16 element unified linear array when the maximum relative error in beam amplitudes caused by array errors is 6.5% and the signal to noise ratio is -20 dB.