Data-Driven Deformation Reconstruction Method for Large Aperture Flexible Vehicle-Mounted Antenna

This article investigates the deformation reconstruction of vehicle-mounted radar antennae in harsh environments. With the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) strain sensor, an online radar antenna monitoring system is designed. This system simulates the typical or actual wind load of an antenna array and reconstructs the deformation shape of the antenna structure using measured discrete strain; moreover, a new strain-displacement transformation relationship modified method, with the measured information of structure deformation and strain, is presented, and thus the accurate displacement evaluation of the antenna structure is completed. The method is divided into three steps: 1) under typical wind loads, the radar displacement and strain data are collected; 2) in combination with the least squares principle, the error matrix of the strain-displacement transformation relationship is solved; and 3) the error matrix is used to modify the strain-displacement transformation relationship. Finally, numerical simulations are conducted, and the comparisons show that the proposed method is superior in terms of reconfiguration accuracy. Experimental validation performed using an antenna experimental platform equipped with FBG strain sensors shows that the reconstruction results in excellent agreements with those measured directly from high accuracy digital photogrammetry.