Efficient Optimization Design of Large Circular Phased Arrays With Low Sidelobes for Beam Scanning

Abstract

This paper proposes an efficient optimization design method for large circular phased arrays with low sidelobes for beam scanning. Based on the differential evolution algorithm (DE), each layer’s radius and element number are optimized to obtain the required element arrangement. If the main beam scans from the Z-axis, it is difficult for designers to find the maximum sidelobe. In addition, a computer with a large memory is required to achieve the final fine verification of the array elements arrangement, and the calculation time is unbearable. To solve these problems, the array structure is rotated so that the direction of the main beam is rotated to the Z-axis, and then the radiation pattern is divided into high-density and low-density areas for random sampling, which improves the calculation speed while ensuring the calculation accuracy. To quickly verify whether the array arrangement obtained by the final design meets the performance requirements, the radiation pattern of the final result is distributed to multiple computers for distributed calculation, which significantly reduces computer memory and time consumption. The numerical experiment shows that the method proposed in this paper can obtain the array arrangement that meets the performance requirements in a short optimization time.

Keywords

• Large circular array
• phased array
• beam scanning
• low sidelobe
• differential evolution algorithm (DE)