Surrogate-Assisted Desing of Low-Sidelobe Microstrip Linear Arrays with Corporate Feeds

A systematic approach to computer-aided design oflow-sidelobe linear microstrip antenna arrays is presented. The novelty of the approach is twofold: (i) utilization of a simulation- based kriging model of microstripjunctions for realization of the optimal feed, and (ii) implementation of simulation-based tuning of the excitation taper driving the array aperture radiators. The tuning is performed using surrogate-based optimization that involves electromagnetic simulations of the integrated circuit comprising the array aperture and the optimized feed. The approach is demonstrated with a twelve-element 25 dB sidelobe level Tschebyscheff excitation taper. The iterative process ensures optimality of the components for realization of the nominal H-plane sidelobe level. Numerical results are validated experimentally.