A NOVEL ELECTRONIC BEAM STEERING TECHNIQUE IN TIME MODULATED ANTENNA ARRAYS

In this paper, a novel technique for electronic beam steering in time modulated linear array (TMLA) is proposed. The beam steering technique is realized at the first sideband by controlling the switch-on time sequences of each element in the TMLA without using phase shifters. The differential evolution (DE) algorithm is employed to improve the gain and suppress the sidelobe levels (SLLs) at both the center frequency and the first sideband, simultaneously. An S-band 8-element double-layered printed dipole linear array was used to verify the technique experimentally. Measured results are compared with numerical data, and good agreement is reported. Moreover, some simulation results on the binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulated signals arriving from different directions received by the proposed approach are presented, which validates the application of the proposed beam steering technique.