An ASCII Data Element Configuration file enables you to define the number of elements and their placement through an external file.
| Keyword | Description |
|---|---|
| AsciiDataElementPattern v2 | Indicates the data format and version of the data format. This is a required keyword and must be the first line in the file. |
| Position Units | Specify the unit of measurment, either "wavelengths" or "meters," used in the element positions below. The default is "wavelengths." |
| Element Positions | Provide one element position per line, specified as a space-separated pair of numbers (x y), where x and y are in number of wavelengths (lambdas) or meters. For elements specified in the file, assign an ID starting with 0 for the first x,y pair read in and ending with an ID of N-1, with N-1 for the Nth x,y pair. Element positions are expected to be on a rectangular grid or a triangular grid. |
Lines in the file starting with a hash symbol (#) are treated as a comment line. The uncommented lines represent the following:
- The first uncommented line is a tag indicating the type of file, followed by the file format version.
- The second uncommented line is the position units, either "wavelengths" or "meters."
- The remaining uncommented lines are positions of the elements with following format:
(x0) (y0)
(x1) (y1)
... ...
(xi) (yi)
where (xi) (yi) represent the position of ith element in wavelengths (lambdas) or meters and 0,0 is at the mechanical boresight.
The following is an example file in wavelengths for a seven-element linear array:
#This is a sample of a seven-element ULA with 0.5 spacing in wavelengths. AsciiDataElementPattern v2 wavelengths -1.5 0.0 -1.0 0.0 -0.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.0 1.0 0.0 1.5 0.0
The following is an example file for a seven-element linear array in meters:
#This is a sample of a seven-element 14.5 GHz ULA with 0.5 spacing in meters. AsciiDataElementPattern v2 meters -0.03101 0.0 -0.02068 0.0 -0.01034 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.01034 0.0 0.02068 0.0 0.03101 0.0