Side Lobe Suppression and Gain Retaining of Practical Space-Borne Active Phased Antenna Array With Triangular Grids

In a practical space-borne active phased antenna array (APAA), main beam scanning angle (MBSA)-dependent low side lobe level (SLL) and taper loss are the ultimate and most critical performances. At some MBSA, extremely SLL in some local space is needed. The harsh limitation on APAA taper loss further complicates the problem seriously. In this paper, the main beam scanning space (MBSS) was divided into several subspaces. Instead of applying a single set of weights regardless of the MBSA, a separate set of weights is implemented independently in each subspace. This transforms the nearly unsolvable problem into multiple solvable problems. An array-decomposition approach is proposed to further reduce the number of synthesis parameters for each subspace. The entire array is simplified as an assembly of multiple sub-arrays. Each and every sub-array shares the same set of weights. The number of synthesis parameters is therefore reduced to the order of the subarray that the synthesis is much easier to solve without sacrificing too much synthesis performance. The proposed approach has been applied to solve concerned practical problem successfully.