Power Loss Suppression for Time-Modulated Arrays in Radar-Communication Integration

In order to minimize the weight and volume of the radio frequency equipment while alleviating the shortage of spectrum resources, electronic system integration has become a topical area in both civil and military fields, and the radar-communications integrated technology based on the time-modulated array (TMA) has also been proposed due to its low complexity and easy reconfiguration property. The TMA has power losses caused by sideband signals radiation, which is inherent drawback. However, existing TMA power loss optimization methods are not suitable for radar-communication integration, because of the existence of multiple harmonic components. In this paper, a closed-form expression of TMA power losses for radar-communications integration is derived and the sideband radiation is optimized. Firstly, some preliminaries about TMA are shown. Then, the radar-communications integration strategy based on TMA is introduced. Moreover, a closed-form expression of TMA power losses caused by sideband signals radiation is derived, and the direct power losses optimization method is proposed based on the derived results. Finally, the theoretical results are validated by simulations.