This article presents the design and tests of a closed‐loop controlled microwave beamformer for phased arrays. The proposed circuit owns an internal reference signal used to automatically set predefined amplitudes and phases of the beamformer branches. This signal is applied to the branches through directional couplers with high directivity and propagates in them similar to the actual signals coming from the antenna array. As a consequence of this architecture, we found that the impedance mismatch between the antennas and the beamformer as well as the mutual coupling in the array is taken into account during calibration, resulting in a more accurate adjustment of amplitudes and phases. In this work, the influence of the mutual coupling between the antennas and the directivity of the couplers on the beamforming calibration uncertainty is also analyzed. From the derived uncertainties, the corresponding pattern degradation is evaluated by performing Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that using couplers with low directivity together with tightly coupled arrays can produce undesirable main lobe squints of up to 4.5°, main lobe level deviations of up to 4.2 dB, and side lobe level variations of up to 24 dB. On the other hand, the use of high directivity couplers can mitigate these problems. Lastly, the validation of the designed circuit is conducted in two stages: bench tests and measurements in an anechoic chamber with an array of six printed monopoles operating at 2.2 GHz. Amplitude and phase calibration errors less than 0.5 dB and 3°, respectively, were observed in the bench tests.
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