Digital beacon asymmetry and quantization compensation

A method, apparatus for reducing errors in a plurality of beacon beams is disclosed. The method comprises the steps of computing quantized channel weights Wc from channel weights Wc for at least some of the channels; estimating the quantization error DeltaBa for each of the beacon beams from a difference between the channel weights Wc and the computed quantized channel weights Wc; and adding the estimated quantization error DeltaBa to the beacon beams. Similarly, a beacon biases equivalent to the beacon asymmetry error can be computed by the ground beacon beam forming software and uploaded to the on-board software for error compensation. The apparatus comprises one or more means, such as a processor communicatively coupled to a memory storing instructions for performing these operations.