AESA and DBF are different things, similar to internal combustion engine and computer controlled fuel injection. AESA means the beams are steered eletronically. However, to shape a beam towards a specific direction, many TR elements need to emit omnidirectional radia waves each with different phases. Early AESA does this phaseshift by a component phaseshifter on the analog radio wave. Recent DBF AESA eliminated this phaseshifter, its TR elements emit radio waves with the desired phases. The radio waves are generated by DACs reading different lists of binary words each value represents a specific amplitied of the wave. So in short, in ABF, the phaseshift is done in analog domain, in DBF in digital domain.
Here is an article about DBF.
The blue parts are digital domain. The green is analog domain. The red is phase-shifters which takes in analog waves and output analog waves of same amplitude but different phases. Its work is done by DAC reading waveform tables in DBF.
Designer of KJ-500 said so long time ago in an interview. It is a first and will remain so until some other DBF radar is put into service.
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