Optimistic design of thinned planar antenna array for radar operating scenarios

In this paper, we propose an optimistic design of thinned planar antenna (TPA) array that provides radiation pattern with reduced peak, RMS and average side lobe levels (SLLs) required for radar operating scenarios. The main design objective is to inactivate some number of elements of the ab initio fully dense array while keeping the half power beam width (HPBW) and directivity unaffected and ensuring the maximum reduction in peak side level (PSLL), RMS SLL (RSLL) as well as average side lobe level (ASLL). Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is applied to find out optimum arrangement of ‘active’ and ‘inactive’ elements in TPA array which results in maximum possible reduction in SLLs. Thinning of a planar array comprising of 10×20 elements is considered in the present study and we compare the computed results obtained through application of our technique with those of recently reported in the literature for similar design examples and those of fully dense array of equal size. The results show satisfying improvements pertaining to reduction in peak, RMS and average side lobe levels using the proposed technique for the design of thinned array.