Low-Cost Subarrayed Sensor Array Design Strategy for IoT and Future 6G Applications

The low-cost sensor array, an effective way to provide sufficient degrees of freedom (DoFs) and affordable costs, is one of the most important foundation devices for large-scale applications of the Internet of Things (IoT) and sixth-generation (6G) spaceborne communication systems. In this article, we propose an irregular subarray-based low-cost sensor array design strategy, which decomposes the practical application problem into two subproblems according to the scene scale. For the small-size cases, a user-defined DoF control strategy is presented, which is flexibly defined and establishes an effective tradeoff between the sensor array radiation performance and manufacturing cost. Moreover, for large-size cases, a hierarchical subarray design strategy is presented. A module panel structure composed of subarray tiles is proposed to avoid both the convergence problem in high-dimensional optimization and engineering complexity. Both design strategies are able to ensure good sensor radiation performance while maintaining engineering convenience. The effectiveness and potential of the proposed method are verified by various numerical examples.