Abstract
Modern communication and sensor systems are in need of antenna front ends providing a high angular resolution. This requirement inherently leads to large and sometimes bulky antenna systems. Biomimetic antenna arrays (BMAAs), however, can provide a high angle estimation performance while occupying little space. The concept adapted from the hearing system of the fly Ormia ochracea has become of great interest recently. While most of the latest works focused on BMAAs with two antenna elements only, this article presents a comprehensive general theory for designing BMAAs with an arbitrary but even number of antenna elements. A scalable equivalent electrical circuit and an associated modal analysis are presented, and the effects of varying levels of biomimetic coupling are highlighted. The methodology presented in this article is applied to the design of a BMAA with four antenna elements at 76.5 GHz of which a prototype was fabricated and measured using radar measurements.
Highlights
A N INCREASING demand of modern radar sensors is the ability to measure the angle of a target relative to the sensor axis
A widely used method is the application of multiple-input– multiple-output (MIMO) radars, where a comparably large virtual aperture is formed by the spatial convolution of the smaller transmitting and receiving apertures [6], [7]
The four antenna elements are arranged in a uniform linear array (ULA) and are spaced at a distance of 1.95 mm, which corresponds to half a wavelength λ in free space at 76.5 GHz
Summary
A N INCREASING demand of modern radar sensors is the ability to measure the angle of a target relative to the sensor axis. BMAAs are applied in order to increase the angular resolution of an antenna array with fixed interelement spacing. This is, e.g., useful if the wavelength of a system is large compared to the available space and the antenna elements cannot provide a large spacing. The biomimetic principle is not limited to very small antenna spacings but can be applied to any antenna array in order to further improve their performance in terms of angular resolution [15]. This article presents a comprehensive, general concept for designing and analyzing BMAAs with an arbitrary but even number of antenna elements.
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