Thinned Connected Slot Array Design Using Higher Symmetries (Invited Paper)

Arrays with a reduced number of active elements have garnered considerable attention due to their potential to simplify phased arrays while preserving their operational versa-tility. Nevertheless, most research has concentrated on numerical synthesis methods, with limited emphasis on the practical imple-mentations of these arrays. In this work, we introduce realizable thinned arrays based on the connected slot architecture. The unit-cell performance is enhanced with glide-symmetric artificial dielectric superstrates which enable the unidirectional radiation of the antenna and significantly increase its bandwidth. The thinned lattices are synthesized using a compressive sensing algorithm which is integrated with a semi-analytical Method of Moments (MoM) for connected slot topologies. Consequently, the array's layout and the inter-element coupling are accounted for during the optimization procedure. The resulting arrays are near-optimal, they demonstrate high efficiency and their realization is feasible.