A Fast Method for Gain-phase Error Calibration in Conformal Array

The joint estimation of the Direction of Arrival (DOA) and gain-phase errors can be implemented by the joint iteration method based on the eigen structure subspaces. However, when applying the method to correct the amplitude and phase error of the conformal array, the fast high-resolution spatial spectrum estimation methods can not be applied directly, because of that the space-domain steering vectors of the conformal array does not possess the Vander monde structure. On the other side, the computation of DOA estimation implemented by searching peak of spatial spectrum in 2-dimension is very large, which limits the application of joint iteration method in conformal array. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a new method for gain-phase error calibration in conformal array by virtual interpolation. The DOA estimation can be implemented rapidly by utilizing the special structure of virtual array, and the searching process of the spatial spectrum peak is eliminated, thus the computational complexity of the proposed method is low and the engineering realization of the proposed method is easy. Theoretical analysis and extensive simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods, and provide a reference for the engineering applications of conformal arrays.