US Patent 8085209 Sub-array polarization control using rotated dual polarized radiating elements

A system and method of minimizing a polarization quantization error associated with an antenna sub-array. The antenna sub-array includes at least two radiating elements, with the radiating elements having different polarization orientations from other radiating elements in the antenna sub-array. The radiating elements are dual polarized and have electronic polarization control. In an exemplary embodiment, the radiating elements are configured to reduce the polarization quantization error to be less than half of a polarization quantization step size. In various embodiments, rotating the radiating elements and implementing a phase delay, individually or in combination, is used to change the polarizations of the radiating elements.