A Versatile Digital Antenna Array Transceiving System With Online Self-Calibration

Digital antenna array-based transceiving platforms are critical for research and development in modern wireless systems, covering 5G communications and beyond fields, satellites, and many other fields. However, existing low-cost platforms, such as software-defined radios, have limited antenna numbers, lack continuous data collection capability and do not support online array calibration. To contribute to filling these gaps, this letter presents a versatile design of a digital antenna array transceiving system. An antenna calibration network is designed to support online self-calibration of all transceiving channels. Utilizing a small onboard storage and the memory of a host computer, a continuous data capturing scheme is developed. The system is implemented and applied in over-the-air experiments for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) detection, demonstrating the effectiveness of the developed design and its potential to enable fast development and validation of wireless system applications.