Cohering of an experimental nonrigid array by self-survey

An experimental demonstration is presented of the capability of a self-survey technique to provide high-quality beams by self-cohering of a nonrigid or flexing phased array. The experimental system considered is a seven-meter nonrigid receive-only array consisting of four L-band TACAN antennas and associated receivers. The experiment also verifies that the tolerance theory associated with the self-cohering technique gives a good indication of array beam quality as a function of the level of measurement errors.