A New Antenna Array Pattern Synthesis Method with Sidelobe Control

Abstract

A new method for synthesising antenna array patterns with controlled sidelobes and enhanced directivity is proposed. It relies on the relationship between the array factor and its corresponding element excitations through Fourier transform properties. Unlike the standard array synthesisbased Fourier transform methods, the proposed method enforces some specific constraints to achieve the desired goals. It involves the computation of the radiation pattern from initial element excitations of a linear array using inverse fast Fourier transform (FFT). Once the radiation pattern has been computed, the constraints are applied to modify it by forcing a wide null within the whole main beam region and preserving all the sidelobes unchanged. By doing this, the sidelobe structures of both original and modified patterns are exactly kept same. Then, a new array pattern with ideally no sidelobes can be obtained by subtracting the original array pattern from the modified pattern. Results of applying the proposed method to the uniformly and non-uniformly excited arrays are shown in the final section.