Design of robust aperiodic antenna array formations for micro-UAV swarms

In this paper, a new design methodology is suggested to create robust antenna array configurations for application in micro-UAV swarms. The method is based on aperiodic tiling of the plane and, as part of the design process, employs a modified version of the perturbation method first introduced. These modifications add more degrees of freedom to the design process, thereby making the optimization of such arrays slightly more complex; however they were also found to vastly improve the performance results. Once these arrays have been designed, the positional error of the elements associated with turbulence effects or other factors are studied. Compensation algorithms are then developed by applying the phase correction method proposed. We show that the phase correction algorithm can be applied very effectively to these aperiodic arrays to eliminate the errors around the main beam while still maintaining their grating lobe suppression and low sidelobe properties. It is also demonstrated that when applied to periodic arrays, the phase correction algorithm is not effective in eliminating grating lobes.