Synthesis of maximally-sparse square or rectangular arrays through compressive sensing

The synthesis of square or rectangular array antennas able to generate mask-constrained shaped beams by exploiting the minimum number of radiating elements is addressed and solved. The approach represents a powerful extension of a design procedure available for the one-dimensional case and able to outperform most of previous synthesis techniques. By exploiting at best the multiplicity of equivalent solutions available for the generation of an unique shaped-beam power pattern, the theory of Compressive Sensing, and a smart formulation in terms of a Convex Programming problem, the proposed design technique results extremely fast and effective.