2-D Mirrored Aperture Synthesis With Four Tilted Planar Reflectors

Abstract

Setting two reflectors perpendicular to each other and an array produces mirrored aperture synthesis (MAS), which obtains a higher spatial resolution than aperture synthesis (AS) for the same antenna array. The proposal of the MAS theory and the experimental verification suggest that the spatial resolution can be improved by setting the reflector. This paper proposes a method in which four tilted planar reflectors are set around an antenna array. This method is named two-dimensional (2-D) mirrored aperture synthesis with four tilted planar reflectors (2-D MAS-T). Because 2-D MAS-T uses more reflectors than MAS, the spatial resolution is further improved. The principle of 2-D MAS-T with an antenna array is given in this paper. The relationship between the size of the reflectors, the spatial resolution and the field of view (FOV) is obtained. The simulation and experimental results demonstrate that 2-D MAS-T can achieve a higher spatial resolution with the same antenna array than 2-D AS and 2-D MAS.