Design of Beam-Steerable Aperiodic Linear Array Antenna With Improved Peak SLL Using Strip-Projection Method

This article discusses the design of the beam-steerable aperiodic linear array antenna with improved sidelobe level (SLL), using the strip-projection method. The strip projection method uses the area of rotated higher-dimensional lattice and projects it to lower dimensions to generate an aperiodic array. This article describes the modeling and analysis of such an array and its optimization for the desired far-field performance. The aperiodic arrays are also generated using various evolutionary optimization algorithms, namely genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and Jaya algorithms. The far-field performance of the generated aperiodic arrays is compared with the conventional periodic array. The proposed 21-element aperiodic array is also populated with a X-band electromagnetically coupled patch antenna and phase shifter designed using varying width of the high dielectric material. The aperiodic patch array antenna is also developed and characterized for various beam scan angles. A significant improvement of 5.72 dB in peak SLL is achieved at ±30° beam scan angle.