Efficient Synthesis of Linearly Polarized Shaped Patterns Using Iterative FFT via Vectorial Least-Square Active Element Pattern Expansion

A novel method is presented to efficiently synthesize linearly polarized shaped patterns for antenna arrays mounted on complex platforms surrounded with many scatters. The vectorial active element patterns (Vec. AEPs) are adopted to include the mutual coupling and complex platform effect. The vectorial least-square (LS) active element pattern expansion (Vec. LSAEPE) method is developed to approximate each Vec. AEP as the radiation from a virtual subarray with identical element patterns, so that the fast Fourier transform (FFT) can be utilized to efficiently perform the forward and backward transformations between the excitation distribution and the vectorial array pattern including mutual coupling. An energy-based weighted averaging method is introduced to merge the excitation vectors obtained from copolarization (CoP) and cross-polarization (XP) pattern synthesis in each iteration and consequently the obtained final excitation vector can simultaneously meet both the CoP and XP pattern requirements. The method is called the iterative Vec. LSAEPE-FFT significantly extends the FFT-based synthesis technique to be capable of controlling the CoP main lobe shape, sidelobe distribution, and the XP level. Three examples for synthesizing different shaped patterns for different antenna arrays on complex platforms are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. A comparison with some other representative methods is also provided to verify the advantages of the proposed method in both accuracy and efficiency.