Synthesis of nonuniformly spaced arrays using a general nonlinear minimax optimisation method

Abstract

Antenna patterns can be synthesized using a new nonlinear minimax optimization method with sure convergence properties. Not requiring derivatives, the proposed method is general and easy to use so that it might be applied to a wide variety of nonlinear synthesis problems for which analytical solutions are not known. To test the algorithm a group of test problems for which exact analytical solutions are known has been considered, namely, optimization of Dolph-Chebyshev arrays by spacing variation. The method is further applied to find the element positions in nonuniformly spaced linear arrays with uniform excitation that produce minimized (equal) sidelobe levels, and comparisons are made with conventional Dolph-Chebyshev arrays.