When you create antenna arrays such as a uniform linear array (ULA), you can use antennas that are built into Phased Array System Toolbox™. Alternatively, you can use Antenna Toolbox™ antennas. Antenna Toolbox antennas provide realistic models of physical antennas. They are designed using method of moments. Phased array antennas represent more idealized antennas that are useful for radar performance analysis and higher level modelling. Some phased array antennas cannot be physically realized, such as the isotropic antenna but are still conceptually useful. You can build and analyze systems using both types of antennas in an identical manner. This example shows how to construct a phased array with either Phased Array System Toolbox or Antenna Toolbox antennas.

When you use an Antenna Toolbox antenna in a Phased Array System Toolbox System object™, the antenna response will be normalized by the maximum value of the antenna output over all directions. The maximum value is obtained by finding the maximum of the antenna pattern sampled every five degrees in azimuth and elevation.