Suppression of grating lobes for MMW sparse array setups

Abstract

For arrays the placement of the single elements determines the angular resolution and the unambiguity interval. The width of the total array determines the resolution capabilities. The wider the elements are placed from each other, the more space in Fourier domain is covered by the measurement and the resolution in time domain will improve. On the other hand the density of the elements has an effect on the angular interval in which objects can be detected unambiguously. For objects within the unambiguous interval grating lobes will appear outside this area while objects outside result in grating lobes in the interval of interest. In this paper the properties of arrays regarding resolution and unambiguity interval will be discussed and methods for the suppression of ambiguous grating lobes are suggested. One approach to suppress the influence of the grating lobes lies in the evaluation of different frequency bands.