Antenna Array Performance Diagnostics Using Theory of Collapsed Distributions

Abstract

The wide bandwidth and wide scan volume are the most desirable features for the antenna arrays meant to be utilized to develop phased array antennas for applications such as radars, 5G wireless networks, Satellite On Move (SatOnMov) vehicular applications, MIMO, etc. The various array parameters as directivity, half power beam width (HPBW), sidelobe level (SLL), average inter-element spacing, etc. are required to characterize these arrays and validate their applicability to the chosen application by the designer. The analysis and synthesis of these arrays are sometimes computationally intensive in case of large arrays with arbitrary shapes due to involved analytical expressions or mathematics which are required to be solved to compute the array parameters. This makes design and optimization a tedious procedure. This article proposes a methodology based on the theory of collapsed distributions (TCD) to reduce the computation time drastically and demonstrate few designs of wide scan antenna arrays. The prediction of the effect of the mutual coupling and the onset of grating lobes is made by introducing the concept of mean or average inter-element spacing computed using TCD. A sparse antenna array having superior scan performance in comparison to the conventional regular or dense antenna arrays is designed and demonstrated using TCD.