Method for determining a phase bias in the signal transmitted by at least one of the radiating elements of an active antenna, and associated device

A method for determining a presence of a phase bias in a signal transmitted by a radiating element of radiating elements of an active antenna on the ground emitting signals into space using a space-division multiple access SDMA method, the method comprising the steps of:

• beamforming by way of dephased combination of the signals emitted by the radiating elements in the direction of each satellite of a set of satellites;
• iteratively performing, over an interval of time (Δt), the steps of:
• beamforming in the direction of each reference receiver of a set of reference receivers comprising between three and ten reference receivers on the ground around the active antenna, using a subset of at least three radiating elements of the radiating elements of the active antenna;
• for each reference receiver, comparing, to a threshold, the difference between the value of a measurement of the power received by each reference receiver and the sum, out of the radiating elements of the subset beamforming in the direction of the reference receiver, of the differences between the equivalent isotropically radiated power in the direction of the reference receiver and the free-space path loss of each radiating element of the subset;
• detecting the presence of the phase bias, when the difference is greater than the threshold, for a radiating element of the subset pointing at a corresponding reference receiver;
• and
• modifying the subsets of radiating elements pointing at the reference receivers, when a phase bias is detected, when the radiating element having the phase bias is not determined.