Papers › Extreme Beam Broadening using Phase Only Pattern Synthesis
Extreme Beam Broadening using Phase Only Pattern Synthesis
G.C. Brown, J.C. Kerce, M.A. Mitchell
This paper describes methods for broadening the beam of a phased array antenna using phase-only element weights. This type of broadening can be valuable for improving the search occupancy and/or reducing the search frame time for large phased arrays, when transmit beam broadening is combined with multiple simultaneous receive beams. Phase-only broadening is required for typical solid-state (active phased) arrays because control of the transmit amplitude at each element is not practical. A notable result is that there is a relationship between the amount of beam broadening and the efficiency (directivity) of the resulting beam. In particular it is shown that broadening less than ~2.5:1 results in reduced beam efficiency for both linear and circular arrays, while a broadening of greater than ~2.5:1 results in improved beam efficiency, and that, therefore, certain broadening configurations will be preferable to the radar designer (e.g. 4:1 in one plane rather than 2:1 in two planes, due to a large difference in efficiency). The algorithms used to achieve the broadening patterns presented here are based on a combination of homotopy from known optimality with a stochastic gradient descent approach using a carefully constructed one parameter family of penalty functions.
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