A NEW AND GENERALIZED DISTRIBUTION FUNCTION OF THE NULLS ON THE UNIT CIRCLE FOR THE DESIGN OF LINEAR ANTENNA ARRAYS

The present author suggests a new and generalized distribution function of the nulls on the unit circle in a complex plane corresponding to the roots of the complex polynomial representing the radiation pattern of a linear antenna array of equally spaced point sources. The suggested distribution is of the formWhen the parameters ψand ξ are chosen suitably, the suggested distribution includes: （1） the uniform end-fire antenna array as a special case, （2） the uniform broadside antenna array as a special case, （3） the Schelkunoff uniform distribution in the range of ψ for a nonuniform end-fire antenna array as a special case, （4） the Dolph-Tchebyscheff optimum distribution for a nonuniform broadside antenna array having number of elements equal to or less than seven as a special case. Computed results show that by means of this suggested distribution function, a better control of the radiation pattern of a nonuniform linear antenna array can be achieved, especially for the purpose of suppressing the first few side-lobes near the main beam, which is very important in certain applications.In this paper explicit expressions for the relative antenna currents have been put in closed forms convenient for calculation and a semigraphical method has been used for all the pattern calculations.