Deterministic Synthesis Approach for Linear Sparse Array Antennas

This article discusses a deterministic technique for the synthesis of isophoric (equally fed) linear sparse array antennas (LSAAs) consisting of nonuniform (aperiodic) placement of the radiating elements on the array aperture. This article derives nonequal interelements spacing in LSAA for demonstrating low sidelobe level (SLL) with equally fed elements. The deterministic approach is called as Array Dilation Technique (ADT). It stretches the array in analogy to an elastic membrane and henceforth, creating an aperiodicity in the array. This technique does not require any model taper and simply takes a uniformly fed array with uniform interelement spacing as the initial array subjected to the application of ADT. The technique demonstrates achieving comparatively lower SLL for optimal thinning levels in comparison to the prior published literature. The numerical case studies presented are compared with the previous literature demonstrating the effectiveness and the outperformance of the newly proposed technique.