Unified Analysis for Antenna Pointing and Structural Errors. Part 1. Review

A necessary step in the design of a high accuracy microwave antenna system is to establish the signal error budget due to structural, pointing, and environmental parameters. A unified approach in performing error budget analysis as applicable to ground-based microwave antennas of different size and operating frequency is discussed. Major error sources contributing to the resultant deviation in antenna boresighting in pointing and tracking modes and the derivation of the governing equations are presented. Two computer programs (SAMCON and EBAP) were developed in-house, including the antenna servo-control program, as valuable tools in the error budget determination. A list of possible errors giving their relative contributions and levels is presented.