Null Beamsteering Using Distributed Arrays and Shared Aperture Distributions

Abstract

In this work, a novel technique using closed-form expressions is rigorously surveyed to collaboratively nullsteer uniformly distributed, planar ring, and volumetric shell distributions. To assess the radiation behavior of these geometries circular tapers is of interest for their attractiveness in derivation, design, application, and mathematical simplicity. A rigorous mathematical derivation is used for the generation of closed-form expressions of the mean-valued radiation characteristics. The numerical simulations are performed using both ANSYS HFSS and MATLAB using a finite-element distribution. To validate the analytical models, we include the measured results of a uniformly distributed ring array topology, constrained to a set of 18 elements and a uniformly distributed shell array topology constrained to 16 elements. The results of all methods are compared to demonstrate exceptional agreement in the recommended theoretical analysis. This process follows differently from traditional phased array nulling methods, which apply the unique amplitude tapers along individual phased array elements. Unlike typical adaptive beamforming algorithms, this process does not require the estimation of second-order statistical metrics and avoids expansions of large polynomial equations. It uses shared aperture characteristics in order to generate null beams simultaneously. This can also be extended to widen null widths from the compounding of these shared aperture distributions, which is shown in simulation.