Sidelobe suppression of planar array antennas by the multistage decision method

The sidelobe level of a planar array antenna with equal amplitude excitation can be suppressed by element thinning. The method of element thinning employed here is a kind of multistage decision procedure or steepest descent approach. Although this method gives the local optimum results, the reduced sidelobe level is assured to be within the obtained level over the whole radiation region. The sidelobe level, for example, can be suppressed -29.7 dB where the array contains 3120 elements arranged within a circular aperture capable of 5815 elements if fully filled. The computation time is also discussed, and it is shown that the computation time decreases drastically by the use of the design method.