Quasi-Analytical Synthesis of Moderate and Large Arrays Radiating Arbitrary "Star-Shaped" Footprint Patterns [Antenna Designer's Notebook]

The proposed quasi-analytical method undertakes the shaping of a desired footprint as a composition of several phi-symmetric circular Taylor patterns exhibiting flat-topped beams. The final pattern is obtained after sampling the circular aperture that is obtained for rectangular-grid planar arrays. A triangular-shaped footprint and a footprint of continental Europe, radiated by planar arrays with moderate and large numbers of elements, show the technique's performance.