An effective framework for the optimal synthesis of reconfigurable array antennas

The power-pattern synthesis problem of reconfigurable array antennas radiating pencil and shaped beams subject to arbitrary upper and lower bounds is tackled by means of an innovative and general approach. The introduced point of view leads to an effective exploration of the solution space, aimed at identifying a priori the ‘attraction basin’ of the globally optimal solution of the problem. The high performance of synthesis procedure can be ascertained through the design of several reconfigurable radiating systems, including linear and planar equispaced arrays, isophoric sparse arrays, and ring arrays radiating circularly symmetric power patterns.