Abstract
Electronic beam steering is an essential feature of state-of-the-art radar systems. Conventional phased array (PA) radars with fixed carrier frequencies are well-known for electronically steering their beam with high directivity. However, the resulting beampattern is angle-dependent but range-independent. Recently, a new electronic beam steering concept, referred to as frequency diverse array (FDA) radar, has attracted increasing attention due to its unique range-angle dependent beampattern. More importantly, the FDA radar employs a small frequency increment across the array elements to achieve beam steering as a function of angle, range, and time. In this paper, we review the development of the FDA radar since its inception in 2006. Since the frequency offset attaches great importance in FDAs to determine the beampattern shape, initially much of the research and development were focused on designing the optimal frequency offsets for improved beampattern synthesis. Specifically, we analyze characteristics of the FDA beampattern synthesis using various frequency offsets. In addition to analyzing the FDA beampattern characteristics, this study also focuses on the neglected propagation process of the transmitted signals in the early FDA literature, and discuss the time-variant perspective of FDA beampatterns. Furthermore, FDA can also play a significant role in wireless communications, owing to its potential advantages over the conventional PAs. Therefore, we highlight its potential applications in wireless communication systems. Numerical simulations are implemented to illustrate the FDA beampattern characteristics with various frequency offset functions.
Highlights
A new concept, namely, frequency diverse array (FDA) radar has emerged as a popular beam steering technique that generates a range-angle dependent beampattern
The existing FDA techniques designed for the range-angle dependent beampattern synthesis have not considered the propagation process of the transmitted signals, and may suffer performance degradation caused by the wave-propagation [133]
7 Conclusion This paper provides an overview of the FDA radar, and briefly discuss its performance and implementation issues with an emphasis on recent research
Summary
One of the most interesting and useful pursuits in radars today is the study of electronic scanned arrays. A new concept, namely, frequency diverse array (FDA) radar has emerged as a popular beam steering technique that generates a range-angle dependent beampattern. In contrast to PA radars using fixed carrier frequencies, FDA radars employ a small frequency increment across each array element to achieve beam steering in both the angle and range domains [39, 40]. The concept of FDA radar was first proposed by Antonik et al in [41], where a progressive incremental frequency shift is applied to the array signals This progressive frequency shift generates a natural time-dependent progressive phase difference across the array elements, which enables the FDA beampattern to scan in range and angle domains as a function of time [42]. The FDA radar [43] has attracted noticeable attention because the range-angle dependent beampattern is attractive to various real-time array signal processing applications including radar, sonar, wireless communications and acoustics [44–46]. Increasing the inter-element spacing results in a narrower main lobe but it comes at the expense of multiple large
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