Shaped Elevation Beam Design for Airborne Conformal Array Detection

Abstract

When airborne early warning radar performs beam scanning, there are often various requirements for the shape of the beam and sidelobe levels. In this letter, the design of elevation beamforming for airborne conformal radar and the beam shape required for its detection are analyzed. The optimization introduces an amplitude control variable into the modified Bernstein polynomial to obtain lower sidelobe levels of arrays, which is useful for early warning radar detection. Particle swarm optimization is used to optimize the modified Bernstein polynomial parameters with the amplitude control variable and phase. The results demonstrate that the excitation amplitude optimized by this method and phase optimized randomly can achieve the beam shape required for airborne conformal array detection. Furthermore, modified Bernstein polynomials defined with five and six parameters are compared. The introduction of an amplitude control variable produces lower sidelobes, and the optimized amplitude distribution is smoother, making it easier to feed the array.