Advanced Antenna Array Beamformers

Array antennas are conglomerations of many small radiating antennas, referred to as array elements. In common antenna pattern analyses the element pattern is considered to be uniform; element to element. Overall transmit or receive patterns are then described as products of two factors: the element pattern and the, so-called, array factor. Practical small array antennas may not conform to the above assumptions, since their elements may be influenced differently by their physical environments. This may cause theoretical patterns to become degraded. In this SBIR effort, TSC proposes to improve the antenna pattern performance of an existing legacy array via corrective phase and/or amplitude controls at its individual elements, through the implementation of a powerful optimization technique whose effectiveness and efficiency has already been demonstrated in other antenna and waveform design applications and whose feasibility has been demonstrated during Phase I of this SBIR topic. During this Phase II TSC proposes to validate this optimization, via modeling and simulation and via actual measurements in a legacy beamformer. TSC also plans to use its optimization to support a three-way tradeoff analysis among radome design, beamformer design, and attendant pattern performance.