Circular-Ring Antenna Arrays Being at the Same Time Sparse, Isophoric, and Phase-Only Reconfigurable: Optimal Synthesis via Continuous Aperture Sources

Abstract

Abstract-An innovative and general approach is proposed to the optimal, mask-constrained power synthesis of circular continuous aperture sources able to dynamically reconfigure their radiation behavior by just modifying their phase distribution. The design procedure relies on an effective a-priori exploration of the search space which guarantees the achievement of the globally-optimal solution. The synthesis is cast as a convex programming problem and can handle an arbitrary number of pencil and shaped beams. The achieved solutions are then exploited as reference and benchmark in order to design phase-only reconfigurable isophoric circular-ring sparse arrays. Numerical results concerning new-generation telecommunication systems are provided in support of the given theory.

Synthesis of Orbital Angular Momentum Antennas for Target Localization

“…By using as reference the continuous distribution shown in Figures 1b and 1c, we synthesized an "isophoric" array having a sparse layout and equal-amplitude excitations for all elements. As well known, this feature is also very convenient from the antenna fabrication point of view (Morabito & Nicolaci, 2018) since it allows a dramatic simplification of the beam forming network. The array design has been performed by means of the following procedure:…”

“…The SLL is equal to −22.7 dB. Since all excitations have the same, unitary amplitude, this configuration is also expected to dramatically reduce the weight, complexity, and cost of any possible related beam forming network (Morabito & Nicolaci, 2018).…”