Mutual coupling compensation in a power synthesis technique of planar array antennas

A technique for the power synthesis of planar arrays, taking into account the mutual coupling between the elements of the array, is presented. This technique, which accounts for the mutual coupling by introducing the port admittance matrix, is based on a generalised projection algorithm and allows constraints on the excitation coefficients to be considered. To alleviate the difficulty related to the trapping of the solution algorithm by a local minimum of the objective functional, the squared amplitude of the co-polar, cross-polar far field components and of the excitation voltages are exploited in defining the objective functional. This choice makes it possible to manage a projection algorithm handling sets whose geometrical properties result in being favourable with respect to the trapping problem. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the approach and the crucial role played by accounting for mutual coupling in order to ensure the reliability of the synthesis procedure