Research on the Method of Composing Very Low Frequency Signals Based on the Staggered Array

Abstract

The Very Low Frequency (VLF) signal of 10 kHz has strong penetrability of ground objects. Because of the antenna size, its application is limited. Therefore, it is important to study the VLF signal generation method based on appropriately sized high frequency radar antennas. The concept of generating VLF signal with high frequency array antenna is proposed in this paper. The waveform of the emission signal, staggered array structure design, and array parameter selection methods are presented and discussed. The pulse width of the composite signal is increased by using periodic pulse signals as radiation element signals. The resting period of the pulse signals is filled with the pulse width expansion generated by the array and the VLF signal with continuous time is composed in the target area. The performance of the composite VLF signal and the energy utilization of the emission signal are evaluated using Peak SideLobe Ratio (PSLR), Integrated SideLobe Ratio (ISLR) and through the spectrum comparison between the emission signal and the composite signal. With the 10 kHz VLF signal composed by 100 MHz radiant element signals, the hundred meter array is simulated. When the staggered array is constituted by nine arrays and the pulse width of the radiation element is set to 0.115 μs, PSLR and ISLR of the composite signal spectrum are –13.34 dB and –9.44 dB respectively, and the energy proportion of 10 kHz low-frequency signal in the composite signal is 89.79%. The effects of radiation element spacing error, time error, phase error and amplitude error of the radiation element signal and the target’s deviation are analyzed. It is found that the proposed method is an effective one and the simulation results have illustrated the effectiveness.